This publication is the second edition, revised and extended, of the outcome of the International Seminary on Recent Welfare State Tendencies, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2015. The aim of the seminary was to discuss the European strategy of social and universal policies and the Brazilian strategy of social policies. It was carried out in a partnership between the Brazilian Center for Health Studies (Cebes), Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and Medico International (MI), which also made possible the release of this book.

Our purpose is to interfere in the debate presently held in Brazil on social policies, their nature and models, seeking to highlight the importance of the universal approach of social policies for the overcoming of the new social risks – increasing ageing population, poverty, poor families headed by women – and discuss the challenges concerning the sustainability of social policies and current tendencies of welfare state in Brazil and worldwide.

Considering that the academic debate has strong influence on the design of public policies, our aim is to contribute to the enhancement of scholarly outputs on the theme.

In Brazil, since the 1988 Federal Constitution there has been the implementation of universal social welfare policies, which employs millions of professionals whose education faces enormous deficiency of specialized literature.

The mainstream literature on social welfare state has been increasingly disseminated in the academic environment that qualifies millions of workers and thousands of militants of social policies in Brazil. In education and research institutions there are thousands of teachers dealing with the theme and they constitute a significant public of this literature.

Therefore, this publication is available in printed version in Portuguese and in digital edition (e-book) in Portuguese and English.