Poverty, Responsibility Practices, and Social Welfare

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of domestic poverty in the Global North. There is a presumption that healthy, capable adults are responsible for meeting their own needs. Still, we must ask when this presumption is defeated and the state becomes responsible for providing welfare payments and services. Using a skills-based account of autonomy, this paper sets out a spectrum of responsibility practices in diverse contexts and the values at stake in each context. Finally, the paper anchors welfare entitlements in social and economic human rights and proposes a responsibility practice suitable for social welfare policy.