The paper examines the claim that international migration and increased ethnic diversity challenge the sustainability and legitimacy of redistributive welfare states. Immigration might potentially lessen pressures related to demographic ageing, labour shortages in welfare services and the...

We suggest a political economy explanation for the stylized fact that intragenerationally more redistributive social security systems are smaller. We relate the stylized fact to an "efficiency-redistribution" trade-off to be resolved by political process. The inefficiency of social security...