Universal health, education and other public services reduce the gap between rich and poor, and between women and men. Fairer taxation of the wealthiest can help pay for them. Oxfam briefing paper-January 2019 Our economy is broken, with hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty while huge rewards go to those at the very top. The number of billionaires has doubled since the financial crisis and their fortunes grow by $2.5bn a day, yet the super-rich and corporations are paying lower rates of tax than they have in decades. The human costs-children without teachers, clinics without medicines-are huge. Piecemeal private services punish poor people and privilege elites. Women suffer the most, and are left to fill the gaps in public services with many hours of unpaid care. We need to transform our economies to deliver universal health, education and other public services. To make this possible, the richest people and corporations should pay their fair share of tax. This will drive a dramatic reduction in the gap between rich and poor and between women and men.

To counter the negative social consequences of the present crisis, States must take measures to provide income support and new employment opportunities to affected workers and their families. This article reviews crisis responses in a number of countries with respect to support from unemployment programmes, the branch of social security most directly affected by economic downturn. It also discusses the trade offs that all social security schemes face during economic crises, when revenues from contributions or taxes earmarked to finance programmes fall and expenditures on benefits rise. In turn, concerns about pension policies receive special attention. The article concludes by discussing the initiative, launched by the United Nations, for a global "social protection floor": to extend, at the very least, basic social protection to the large majority of the world's population who are currently without and who remain vulnerable to all economic and social risks.i ssr_1361 47..70

The extension of social protection to all has become a central policy objective, both nationally and internationally.

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In this article, a historical institutional approach is applied to study the Indian welfare trajectory. The aim is to understand which reproduction pattern possibly inhibited the constitutional call for adequate standards of living and welfare for India's citizens. Partha Chatterjee's concept of political and civil society forms a plausible reproduction mechanism, which offers a new explanation for the development of highly fragmented social policies. As a consequence of this mechanism, existing inequalities were perpetuated rather than overcome. However, the recent shift to rights-based social protection may challenge this pattern and allow for greater social policy change in the future.