By Jochen Clasen
University of Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom
(The 18th Richard Titmuss Memorial Lecture,on which this article is based, was delivered by the author on May 2, 2004 at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, with the cooperation of the National Insurance Institute, Jerusalem, Israel.)
The article focuses upon the link between economic and social policy. In current debate a conflictual relationship is implied between economic policy on the one hand, and publicly funded and organized social policy on the other.
Social policy is almost exclusively portrayed as a cost factor .The article seeks to present a view which emphasizes a complementary and interdependency rather than an antagonistic relationship between economic and social policy. It does so, first, by underlying the "economic" advantages of social policy and then by discussing problems of empirically testing the relationship between economic and social policy. Finally, a perspective of social policy is presented which is broader than the currently prominent thesis of a productive value of social policy which emphasizes the need to expand certain types of welfare state programs, such as labor market policy, education and child care as a form of "social investment". By implication, such a view tends to ignore or downplay the economic role of social policy , such as unemployment and other types of cash transfers. The claim made here is that by adopting a broader view , the legitimacy of arguably passive social policy programs rests not only on social but also on economic considerations.