Toward Global Welfare State Convergence?: 
Labour Market Policy and Old Age Policy 
in Sweden, Canada and the US

Gregg M. Olsen
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB
Canada

Abstract
‘Convergence theorists’ suggest that domestic and/or global challenges and pressures are rendering welfare states broadly similar across national boundaries.  ‘Resilience theorists’, in contrast, argue that a range of socio-political factors have allowed states to differentially respond to these pressures and maintain their distinct national social policy approaches.  However, both research streams have addressed the ‘welfare state’ writ large in a multitude of nations and typically relied upon narrow, quantitative budgetary indicators.  This study examines changes to key income security and social service programs in two central policy domains – labour market policy and old age policy – in three nations, Sweden, Canada and the US.  It concludes that there is marked evidence of some degree of ‘convergence’ in the broadest sense of the term across these three nations. However, despite notable reform, Sweden has retained its distinctive social policy approach and does not closely resemble its North American counterparts.  But both Canada and the US have much more readily embraced genuinely neo-liberal restructuring and have become increasingly similar over the past two decades in the two policy areas examined here.