The decoupling of asset-based welfare from anglo-liberal growth: a curious case of spurious transfer

Asset-based welfare (ABW) – the use of public policy interventions to encourage individuals to accumulate assets for future welfare needs – has gained prominence across European economies. This looks like a familiar story of policy transfer from an Anglo-liberal epicentre, the UK, in which ABW emerged as a corollary of the country’s growth model. Drawing on short case studies from diverse welfare and growth regimes, this paper argues instead that ABW’s spread is better understood as a common response to similarly interpreted demographic and fiscal pressures. We further show that ABW generates distinct context-specific structural tensions. In the UK, it is parasitic upon the very growth that the growth regime is there to produce. In more export-oriented, consumption-repressing regimes, ABW may prove more economically viable, but its regressive logic – benefiting the asset-rich while disadvantaging the asset-poor – threatens to fracture the cross-class coalitions that underpin welfare provision. The paper thus both challenges standard models of policy diffusion and underscores ABW’s disruptive potential for welfare state development in Europe.