The dismantling of the Welfare State in Health and Education: Globalization

Abstract

In recent years, the Welfare State has experienced important setbacks in Europe and other western countries, especially in the case of Spain. It appears that among the reasons are the financial crisis in the USA caused by the real-estate bubble of 2006 (although it did not become obvious until 2008), the use of restrictive ideologies based on the School of Chicago, and the reduction of the deficit by means of programs of austerity in health and education. The United Nations, by means of the UNESCO, and the World Health Organization, proclaimed several resolutions urging governments to increase services in Education and Health, and to drastically increase universal access and quality of health services by means of policies of social protection to the most vulnerable groups. This would mean an increase, on one hand, to the level of education, the right to information, the freedom of opinion and of expression, cultural rights, as well as the right to take part in scientific advances. In this paper, we study the systems of Health and of Education in order to analyze the reasons of this degradation and to try to determine the future of both, as well as to understand the effect of globalization in the dismantlement of these basic social systems.

Keywords

• crisis
• desigualdad
• educación
• estado de bienestar
• sanidad