Ekonomia dobrobytu a państwo opiekuńcze - relacja przeszłości czy przyszłości?

The intention of this paper is to trace links between welfare economics and the concept of welfare state. We show that welfare of man, according to Vilfredo Pareto and Arthur Cecil Pigou, was a much wider notion than just economic one. It seems that, however, economists had chosen to follow the Pareto optimum principle in their research. It was also not welfare economics that triggered the construction of welfare states, but ideas and political motives. Yet nowadays the pursuit of efficacy and innovations changes the way that welfare policies are perceived. The approach becomes more instrumental instead of humane. It follows the Pareto improvement principle leaving distributional aspects to inconsequential considerations. It stands thus with clear relation to the concepts of welfare economics, but gradually detaches from the idea of human welfare.