Un nuevo equilibrio de bienestar

From both a quantity and quality perspective, children occupy centre-stage in any welfare equilibrium. Very low fertility does not correspond to citizens’ desires and will, in the long haul, have dire societal consequences. Insufficient investment in the quality of our children will adversely affect their life chances as adults and will also harm our economic well-being. Children are a collective asset and the cost of having children is rising, in particular as women embrace the norm of life-long employment. The double challenge is to eliminate the constraints on having children in the first place, and to ensure that the children we have are ensured optimal opportunities. In the following I analyze the twin challenges of fertility and child development. I then examine which kind of policy mix will ensure both the socially desired level of fertility and investment in our children. The task is to identify a Paretian optimum that will ensure efficiency and social equity gains simultaneously

After the Golden Age: The future of the welfare state in the new global order

The advanced welfare state, which became one of the hallmarks of the "Golden Age" of post-war prosperity, implied more than a mere upgrading of existing social policies in the developed industrial world. In the broadest of terms, it represented an effort to bring about economic, moral and political reconstruction. Economically, it departed from the orthodoxies of the pure market nexus and required the extension of income and employment security as a right of citizenship. Morally, it sought to defend the ideas of social justice, solidarity and universalism. Politically, the welfare state formed part of a project of nation building, affirming liberal democracy against the twin perils of fascism and bolshevism. Many countries became self-proclaimed welfare states, not so much to give a label to their social policies as to foster national social integration. In today's globally integrated open economies, however, many of the assumptions that guided post-war welfare state construction in the advanced industrial world seem no longer to obtain. Non-inflationary demand-led growth within one country now appears impossible; services rather than manufacturing must assure full employment; the population is rapidly aging; the conventional family, relying on the male breadwinner, is in decline; and the life course is both changing and diversifying. Such structural shifts challenge traditional social policy thinking

The Role of Social Institutions in Inter-Generational Mobility

The primary goal of inter-generational mobility (IGM) research has always been to explain how and why social origins influence peoples’ life chances. This has naturally placed family attributes at centre stage. But the role of social institutions, most notably education systems, as a mediating factor has also been central to IGM theory. Indeed, generations of stratification research were premised on the core assumption that equalizing access to education would weaken the impact of social origins. In theory, policies, institutions, as well as macro-economic and historical context, have been identified as crucial in shaping patterns of social mobility (D’Addio, 2007). But apart from education, empirical research has contributed little concrete evidence on how this occurs.

Defamilisation Measures and Women’s Labour Force Participation – A Comparative Study of Twelve Countries

This paper examines the relevance of two interpretations of defamilisation (“freedom of the family” and “freedom of women from the family”) to the search for effective measures for strengthening women's participation in the paid labour market. Based on these two interpretations, two types of defamilisation measures (care-focused and women's economic) are identified. Two defamilisation indices are developed respectively covering twelve countries. The importance of the two types of defamilisation measures in assisting women to access employment are discussed from two angles. The input angle refers to the extent to which countries are committed to the provision of these defamilisation measures. The output angle is about the relationship between these defamilisation measures and the degree of women's participation in the paid labour market. Through conducting these analytical tasks, this paper also contributes to the examination of the relationship between types of welfare regimes and the provision of defamilisation measures

Gordon Brown's misplaced Smithian appeal : the eclipse of sympathy in changing British welfare norms

Gordon Brown has eagerly lauded his fellow Kirkcaldy citizen, Adam Smith, as his main policy inspiration. This article tests the rigour of such a claim by matching Brown's promotion of Smithian ‘sympathy’ as the centrepiece of his programme for government with the changes introduced by his Treasury to the British welfare model. In the 1970s, Thomas Wilson showed that the traditions of the post-war British welfare state were compatible with a modified form of Smithian sympathy socialised at the level of the state. New Labour has set about reforming the welfare model with respect to both its underlying institutions and the basic subjectivities of its recipients. I show that Brown's substantive preference for an asset-based system of welfare moves those subjectivities away from the ‘relational self’ of Smithian sympathy and towards a much more ‘autonomous self’. Consequently, I conclude that it is stretching Smith's concept of sympathy too far, even in a modified socialised form, to associate it with New Labour's asset-based system of welfare

Public policy-making and risk profiles: Scandinavian centre-right governments after the turn of the millennium

Recent theoretical advances in the welfare state literature have outlined the differences between labour market- and life course-related schemes as centre-right parties have difficulties in enacting retrenchment on life course-related schemes because these concern every voter. In contrast, the textbook risk profile of centre-right parties’ electorates allows them to cutback on labour market-related schemes as these parties get negligible support from workers and low-income voters. Conducting a comparative case study of recent Danish and Swedish centre-right governments, this article analyses the stylized assumptions on the party level by comparing two similar centre-right governments, which differed in their voter coalitions’ risk profile. I first argue that centre-right governments are generally constrained by the popular entrenchment of the universal welfare state when it comes to life course-related welfare schemes. Second, I argue that the leeway on labour market-related schemes is contingent on the actual risk profile of the centre-right’s electorate, and thereby move beyond the stylized assumptions from recent literature. In this respect, the Danish centre-right did, in contrast to its Swedish counterpart, gain power with an unusual high support among workingclass voters which constrained its latitude on labour market-related schemes. I find that the Danish centre-right governments after 2001 acted with bound hands thanks to its high working-class backing, and refrained from outright cutbacks on both labour market- and life course-related schemes until 2010 except for labour market outsiders. In contrast, the Swedish centre-right had a much lower working-class backing and therefore engaged in some outright cutbacks of labour market-related schemes such as unemployment benefits directly after taking office 2006. The centre-right’s actual voter coalition’s risk profile is thus an important determinant for its public policies and its leeway for policy-seeking

Two decades of change in Europe: The emergence of the social investment state

Since the late 1970s, the developed welfare states of the European Union have been recasting the policy mix on which their systems of social protection were built. They have adopted a new policy orthodoxy that could be summarised as the 'social investment strategy'. Here we trace its origins and major developments. The shift is characterised by a move away from passive transfers and towards the maximalisation of employability and employment, but there are significant national distinctions and regime specific trajectories. We discuss some caveats, focusing on the question whether the new policy paradigm has been established at the expense of social policies that mitigate poverty and inequality. © 2012 Cambridge University Press

Household composition across the new Europe: Where do the new Member States fit in?

In this paper we present indicators of household structure for 26 of the 27 countries of the post-enlargement European Union. As well as broad indicators of household type, we present statistics on single-person and extended-family households, and on the households of children and older people. Our main aim is to assess the extent to which household structure differs between the "old" and "new" Member States of the European Union. We find that most of the Eastern European countries may be thought of as lying on the same North-North-Western-Southern continuum defined for the "old" EU Member States, and constituting an "extreme form" of the Southern European model of living arrangements, which we term the "Eastern" model. However, the Baltic states do not fit easily onto this continuum

Political Parties and Foreign Aid

The influence of partisan politics on public policy is a much debated issue of political science. With respect to foreign policy, often considered as above parties, the question appears even more problematic. This comparison of foreign aid policies in 16 OECD countries develops a structural equation model and uses LISREL analysis to demonstrate that parties do matter, even in international affairs. Social-democratic parties have an effect on a country's level of development assistance. This effect, however, is neither immediate nor direct. First, it appears only in the long run. Second, the relationship between leftist partisan strength and foreign aid works through welfare state institutions and social spending. Our findings indicate how domestic politics shapes foreign conduct. We confirm the empirical relevance of cumulative partisan scores and show how the influence of parties is mediated by other political determinants

Comparing Welfare Regime Changes: Living Standards and the Unequal Life Chances of Different Birth Cohorts

The cohort sustainability of welfare regimes is of central importance to most long-term analyses of welfare state reforms (see for example: Esping-Andersen et al., 2002). A complement to these analyses shows that changes in intra versus inter cohort inequalities are major outcomes or consequences of the trajectories of the different welfare regimes. Previous comparative research papers show the difference between France and the United-States, since the American intra-cohort inequalities have increased strongly for the last three decades, when the French case show less intra-cohort inequalities and more inter-cohort imbalances at the expense of younger generations of adults (Chauvel 2006). Here, we propose a comparison between the US, Danish, French, and Italian dynamics of distribution of after tax and transfers equivalised income by age, period and cohort, to assess how different welfare regimes gave different trade-offs between intra and inter cohort inequality. The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data are used to analyze the transformations of the intra cohort inequalities (based on interdecile ratios) and the changes in the cohort life chances. The main result is that the conservative and the familialistic welfare regimes are marked by more inter-cohort inequalities to the expense of young social generations, who are relatively impoverished, when the social-democrat and the liberal ones show less inter-cohort redistribution of resources, but increasing intra-cohort inequality, particularly in the case of the US. In terms of cohort sustainability of welfare regimes, the French and Italian dynamics seem to be unsustainable since the contemporary well-off seniors are flowed by impoverished mid-aged groups who will be poor seniors of the 2020s