This book focuses on arrangements for redistributing consumption opportunities over the life cycle and for providing compensation for income losses or large expenditures due to reasons such as illness and unemployment. After extensive coverage of the nature of inequalities in income and wealth in a market economy, and various notions of social justice, the author discusses public and private transfers in cash or in kind related to old age, childhood, illness and the like. Importantly, the book takes into account both equity and efficiency aspects.This concise discussion of the welfare state and its alternatives will be of great interest to students of economics at the intermediate level as well as to graduate students of sociology, social work and other social sciences. It will also appeal to politicians and civil service managers with an interest in the fundamentals of social policy.