Focusing on an array of European and North American welfare states between 1985 and 2005, we consider how welfare state policies are related to households' relative incomes, taking into account cross-national and temporal differences in income distributions. At the same time, we consider how two...

In this paper, we examine the consequences of different welfare state strategies. We argue that four major strategies have appeared: 1) the primary caregiver/secondary earner strategy, focused on valuing the care in which women engage; 2) the primary earner/secondary caregiver strategy, focused...