Welfare in Ultima Borealia

The headquarters of the Ministry of Social Solidarity, Insurance, and Relief in Ullelfrborg, which administers most social welfare programs in Ultima Borealia.

Welfare in Ultima Borealia is highly comprehensive, and organised according to the Nordic and social-democratic model of the welfare state. Conventionally and legally, the Borealian welfare state is divided into three categories: social solidarity, universal programs given to sections of the whole population without means-testing which all Borealians theoretically benefit from at some point in their lives, social insurance, mandatory programs based on contributions and often having a degree of occupational segmentation, and social relief, means-tested social programs to the poor underserved by these preexisting programs.

In accordance with Ultima Borealia's dominant social-democratic welfare model, most Borealian welfare programs fall under the first category of social solidarity, including programs of single-payer healthcare, childcare, and elder care free at the point of use and universal child benefits; additionally, social insurance plays a major role in the Borealian welfare system, covering both unemployment insurance and pensions for both the elderly and the disabled (although the Borealian welfare model also contains an additional universal social pension unaffected by contributions). By contrast, social relief–principally consisting of a guaranteed minimum income–plays a small role in the modern Borealian welfare state, and today refers as commonly to social work as it does to conventional means-tested welfare benefits. The Borealian welfare state is distinct for an extremely high rate of family spending at 12% of GDP, mostly in the form of child allowances, and, in an otherwise largely social-democratic, universalist context, for having a pension and unemployment system partially (though not entirely) segmented by occupation, conventionally anspect of more conservative, Continental welfare systems.

The modern Borealian welfare state was mostly developed in the 1940s and 1950s under successive Socialist-Communist-Agrarian coalition governments. After renewed class struggle from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s - termed the Years of Lead and Broken Glass - the Borealian welfare state underwent significant revision. The Borealian pension system underwent the most significant reforms, both through the introduction of occupationally and regionally-segmented pensions atop the relatively minimal social pension system in the 1970s under the right-leaning administration of [TBD Not!Robert Muldoon], the reform of this pension system to be somewhat less generous, segmented, and more dependent on contributions under the left-leaning administration of [Insert socdem faced with a capital strike who reluctantly goes Third Way-ish here]. Because of its wage-levelling effect, Borealian scholars also sometimes consider the country's wage-earner funds, also introduced under [Capital Strike Guy], although it's usually classified as an aspect of its labour relations system. Today, both the Borealian welfare state are the wage-earner funds and a broader social corporatist system of labour relations are lynchpin of the country's modern class compromise. Proposals to dismantle or substantially modify either such system are extraordinarily unpopular, and called a third rail of Borealian politics.