Social welfare is the well-being of the entire society. is more concerned with the quality of life that includes factors such as the quality of the environment (air, soil, water), level of crime, extent of drug abuse, availability of essential social services, as well as religious and spiritual aspects of life. Globalization is said to be the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture.
Globalization has generated indebtedness that has undermined the capacity of governments to secure education, health and social protection. It has threatened social and labor standards, segmented social policy within countries and created zones excluded from any of the benefits of globalization. It has negative effects on the social structure, increases dependency on developed, threat to workforce countries
Globalization is the cause of welfare state decline. The basic premise of the efficiency hypothesis is that the instrumental capacity of the nation-state is decisively undermined by the globalization of core economic activities. According to Brady et al. (2005), the globalization of production and investment necessitates welfare state retrenchment, since states lose autonomy over social welfare policies in the face of the overwhelming global economy. Moreover, under the neo-liberal economic paradigm of globalization, big government is regarded as inefficient in the globalised economic environment, since high levels of taxes and social spending impede developing an internationally competitive economy .Therefore, as national economic schemes open to the international market, governments are forced to adapt to the imperatives of global competition with an austere fiscal policy, which induces the cutting of cost-intensive social welfare programmers’ (Genschel, 2004). Therefore one can point out that several
Bibliography: International Monetary Fund 2000, Globalization: Threat or Opportunity? Washington D.C, Bhagwati, J 2004, In Defense of Globalization, Oxford University Press, New York BlakemoreKiggundu, MN 2002, Managing globalization in developing countries and transition Economies, K., and Griggs, E. 2007.Social Policy: An Introduction: Oxford: McGraw Hill. Gaidzanwa, R. B. (Ed) 2001. Policy Making Issues in Southern Africa. Harare: SAPES Books. Using examples, discuss the assertion that globalization is a threat to social welfare.