The civil servant’s pension was a promise. Then it became a debt. Then it became nothing.
Between 1945 and 1975, Western Europe built the most expansive social contracts in history. By 1990, those contracts were broken. Those Who Fell Between the Walls examines how the institutions designed to protect the middle class—pensions, housing subsidies, public healthcare, and education systems—became the instruments of its slow dissolution.
Tabitha Blackmere
Writes psychologically layered nonfiction about ambition, identity, and emotional resilience with a sharp literary voice.
welfare state collapse history middle class economic decline European social contract privatization public housing pension reform history professional class precarity postwar Europe society