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Unidentical twins: recent social policy developments in Canada and the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2020

Daniel Béland  and
Alex Waddan
Daniel Béland
Affiliation:
McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Alex Waddan*
Affiliation:
McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, McGill University, Montreal, Canada School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
*
CONTACT Alex Waddan aw148@leicester.ac.uk
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Abstract

There is a vast social policy literature on how Canada and the United States share key characteristics associated with the liberal welfare regime such as significant reliance on both social assistance and tax-subsidized private benefits and services. Yet, a closer look at these two countries points to key differences in areas such as fiscal federalism, health care, old-age pensions, and family benefits. This special issue of the Journal of Comparative and International Social Policy looks at recent social policy developments in Canada and the United States in ways that further illustrate the broad similarities, but also the key cross-national differences in policy design and real-world consequences, between these two countries. This Introduction explains why Canada and the United States are “unidentical twins” in social policy before discussing the contributions comprising this special issue.

Keywords

Social policypolicy changeCanadaUnited States
Type
Introduction
Information
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy , Volume 35 , Issue 1: SI: Recent Social Policy in Canada and the United States , February 2019 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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