Challenges to the development of the welfare State in Portugal and Greece

Abstract

Portugal and Greece under crisis applied adjustment programs (2010-2018) as conditionalities for receiving loans by the Troika. Both count among the most poor and unequal countries in the EU and their welfare states have been built recently. Our main research objective is to conduct a comparative analysis of the impact of social policy reforms on public expenditures, development and welfare indicators such as poverty, inequality, unemployment, net earnings, and emigration. If results differed in the two cases, what are the reasons? Is it due to previous growth levels, exogenous factors (adjustment programs) or endogenous ones (welfare state models) or post-Troika governments? We retrieve evidence from secondary literature, state archival documents, IMF and EC evaluation reports. We elaborate on statistical datasets retrieved from Eurostat. We find that welfare state components, i.e. health and employment levels, were deeply affected in Greece and we explain processes of divergence towards a universalist model.