Welfare-state measures funnel household benefits through the male wage earner.

Evidence

If you examine the list of services typically included in the operationalization of the welfare state and which reflect quite faithfully the concept, almost all deal with problems of the working man. What happens if there is an accident on the job? What happens when he is unemployed? What happens when he gets old? Using the example of Hicks discussed above (p. 75), you can see that his four dimensions of the welfare state deal with these kinds of services. The goods and services for the household/family are thus funneled through the principal (male) wage earner. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 585

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to feminist-sociology arguments that unpaid care work and survivor benefits conceal gendered assumptions inside apparently neutral concepts.
• SEED: Angle: the seemingly technical act of listing a concept’s indicators can quietly bake in a particular family model.