But alongside the time for production and consumption, there is the time for interpersonal services. The shift in the allocation of time between public, paid time and private, unpaid time, however, and the political conflict over their exchange relation, become understandable if the role of the state is analysed as well, which has entered into the division of labour between the sexes. For the establishment and consolidation of the welfare state, which is here taken to be synonymous with a socio-political system that recognizes many forms of expression in concrete historical terms, work was and is the central, integrating mechanism holding the institutions of social security together. It is status in the labour market, when, for how long, in what capacity, and with what breaks somebody is employed, which determines whether and to what extent he or she is entitled to draw the benefits of the social security system in cases of illness, accident, unemployment and old age. It is the already paid, pre-financed time in the labour market which decides who – as in the cases of insurance claims just mentioned – is permitted to draw time with payment, yet without work. For those who were not included in this work-insurance system, not even through their family affiliation above all to a male employee, remedial measures developed which, as a continuation of the old poor relief, were always conceived merely as a safety net. The original aim of the welfare system was rooted in making means of subsistence available whenever income was lost for recognized reasons, that is, when either the labour market or the informal safety net of the family failed. In a second stage of the development of the welfare state, which did not occur until the 'three golden decades' after the middle of the present century, the state, with a rapid increase of public expenditure, took charge of the development of the tasks of reproduction which had been performed within the family at an earlier, rudimentary and still little-differentiated stage. Education, health and social services were now developed, professionalized and expanded on a governmental level. No longer just those who have a status in the labour market are now entitled to receive benefits, but everyone is now given new 'social rights'on the strength of their universal status as citizens of the state.
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