Big Data and the Welfare State

Reviews / Votes

'Big Data and the Welfare State is a big book. Iversen and Rehm take a familiar observation-that advances in science and technology are stripping away our 'veil of ignorance' about health and income risks-and turn it into a revelatory account of the changing structure and politics of national welfare states. Anyone concerned about inequality and social policy in the information age (and everyone should be) has to read this book.' Jacob S. Hacker, Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science, Yale University and author, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream (2nd ed., 2019) 'This is an agenda setting book. It asks how the growing abundance of inform alters both private and public insurance markets. It is a critical theoretical empirical contribution to scholarship on the welfare state and understanding contemporary developments in solidaristic coalitions (or lack thereof) in demanding social insurance.' Jane Gingrich, Associate Professor of Political Economy, University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow, Magdalen College 'This book will change the way we think about the welfare state. Iversen and Rehm develop an innovative argument about the central place of information at the heart of the welfare state and how the Big Data revolution threatens to undermine fundamental principles of social insurance and solidarity. A must-read for anyone interested in political economy and inequality research!' Marius R. Busemeyer, Professor of Political Science, University of Konstanz '... this is an outstanding book that should be read widely - within the scholarly political economy community and more broadly.' Timothy Hicks, Public Choice