Municipal Social Policies: Limitations and Welfare

Abstract

After a historical revision, this article argues that Argentina’s social policies have always been focused on the low-incomes working class, and that welfare policies played a merely residual role. However, during the ‘80s and especially the ‘90s, the situation was reversed and the shaft was put on the welfare policies (especially food-related one), propelled by the high variety and quantity of social demands generated by a context of economic adjustment. It also seeks to ascertain the causes that make municipalities the main promoters of these policies. The hypothesis under test is that during the last decade social policies capable of generating human development have been left, in order to adopt welfare policies that generate dependency of society from the State.