Since 1914 rich countries have shifted their social spending missions, away from anti-poverty policies and mass schooling and toward subsidies to the elderly. Over r4ecent generations, this mission shift has probably compromised both income equality and income growth. The global mission shift toward public pensions may have been due in large part to improvements in life expectancy, which allowed longer life past work and contributed to political “gray power.” The inference about gray power springs from the fact that public pension spending rose even per elderly person, and not just at the rate of population aging. Its per-person generosity rose faster than the rise in educational spending per child of school age. The rising demand for government pensions was probably linked, in addition, to a quiet global change in the role of intra-family transfers. Career and family developments may have raised public pressure for more government support of the elderly.

All the ten main findings and three global policy lessons of the book are previewed – but only previewed – here.

Human societies have always needed safety nets to catch those who end up in need. The risks have always been there. Only recently has there been a global surge in government social spending. The major historical issues raised by this long delay are introduced in this chapter. Readers are given spoiler alerts about whether it had to be government that spread the nets, and about whether large-spending countries got the mix of social spending wrong more often than did low-spending governments. The conventional arguments for and against tax-based social spending are introduced.

Immigration surges have complex economic effects, and nationalist backlash has complex effects on social policy. The economic and fiscal effects of immigration are mixed in the short run, though clearly positive over the generations. There are four policy options relating to immigration and social safety nets: keeping immigration free, stopping it, discriminating again immigrants in entitlements, and selectivity in immigration. Chapter 11 weighs the political likelihoods.

Did safety nets for the neediest have to wait for government to build them with taxes? If so, why did it take so long for any government in the world to channel a significant share of national income to those with needs based on inability to produce? Why did tax-based social spending then appear only in the forms of poor relief and public elementary schooling, and primarily in Northwest Europe? This chapter locates and explains the delayed arrival of tax-based help for those in poverty. The following historical forces dominated both the timing and the Northwest European location of the emergence of government social spending: (1) Private safety-net mechanisms existed for millennia, but never came close to curing poverty, either today or in centuries past. (2) The rise of government revenue-raising capacity had to precede social-spending. This fiscal capacity arrived in Northwest Europe first. (3) Those in power were not motivated to provide safety nets until they feared disorder or until political voice had diffused far down the socioeconomic ranks. See Appendix A for detailed sources and notes.