Abstract Workers, citizens, residents. Inclusion of people in social security programmes – keystones of the welfare state – is generally realized through legal texts which define groups that are eligible for social benefits. Through such group definitions, legislation does not just label groups, but it shapes or even constructs them. These legal group constructions can be unidimensional or multidimensional. Unidimensional groups are constructed by referring to one category, for example employment status. Multidimensional groups, in contrast, are constructed by combining different categories. Research has rarely explored the latter, i.e. how social rights are ascribed to groups in a way that brings together different criteria. Against this backdrop, we explore group constructions focusing on multidimensional groups. Relying on a novel analytical framework with ten categories, we analyse old-age protection legislation from 15 countries from the Global North and the Global South passed between 1880 and 2020. We find that multidimensional group constructions are highly relevant for social security inclusion. Across three types of old-age protection schemes – employment-based, need-based and behaviour-based schemes – citizenship and place of residence are highly salient categories in multidimensional group constructions. In contrast, multidimensional group constructions with gender and race are unexpectedly rare. Surprisingly, exclusions based on citizenship, residence and behaviour have weakened over time.
Öktem et al. (Fri,) studied this question.