The growth of the welfare society has mirrored the economic transformation of the country from one dominated by an agricultural economy to one dominated by manufacturing and service industries. Such a shift almost automatically has caused a profound decrease of traditional authority and a corresponding increase in secular rational authority. The welfare society has emancipated the individual from dependence on his or her family, and after the mid-twentieth century the welfare state radically reduced the significance of the traditional family in providing for children’s maintenance. Having lost its kulturelle Bedingungen already in the late nineteenth century, legitimacy could only appear as a meaningless legal relict of an already passed society in the new welfare state. Economic growth during the first half of the twentieth century raised the standards of living enough to make it possible for almost 137 survival vs. self-expression traditional vs. secular-rational authority
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