In recent decades, people's experience of welfare has undergone a dramatic transformation, with the responsibility for managing risk increasingly being shifted from state institutions to non-governmental agents, individuals and agencies. Some commentators see this shift as heralding a fundamental transformation of society, while others have pointed to the resilience of the welfare state. In the transformation of the welfare state, moral and ethical questions about collective responsibility for social and economic risks abound.

In Risk, Welfare and Work, editors Greg Marston, Jeremy Moss and John Quiggin bring together contributors from diverse disciplines to explore these questions and examine shifting risk in historical and contemporary Australia—including implications for groups such as young people and Aboriginal Australians—and views of Britain and the United States.