Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

Compulsory unemployment insurance, first introduced in Britain in 1911, was instituted in Italy (1919), Austria (1920), Ireland (1923), Poland (1924), Bulgaria (1925), Germany and Yugoslavia (1927) and Norway (1938). Romania and Hungary already had accident and sickness insurance schemes in place before World War One, and all the countries of eastern Europe introduced national pension systems between the wars. Family allowances were a key element in plans to increase the birth rate—a particular obsession after 1918 in countries badly hit by wartime losses—and were introduced first in Belgium (1930), next in France (1932) and in Hungary and the Netherlands just before the outbreak of war. But none of these arrangements, not even those of the Nazis, represented comprehensive welfare systems. They were cumulative ad hoc reforms, each addressing a particular social problem or improving upon the demonstrated shortcomings of previous schemes.