Social risks and active social citizenship—A cross‐national comparison of long‐term care policies for older people in European welfare states

Abstract

AbstractDue to demographic ageing, many welfare states have restructured their long‐term care (LTC) policies by simultaneously extending older people's social rights to publicly‐funded care and strengthening their active role in handling their care situation. By doing so, they are increasingly constructing older people as active social citizens. However, the consequences of this shift for older people's social risks are controversial and whether it comes at the cost of public responsibility for ensuring sufficient care provision. Therefore, this study investigates to what extent European welfare states differ in terms of how they conceptualise older people as active social citizens in their LTC policies and how these differences affect older people's social risks. It introduces an innovative typology to classify LTC policies with respect to different approaches towards active social citizenship and related social risks. It applies this approach to a cross‐national comparison of five European countries using data on LTC policy regulations, comparative policy databases and secondary literature. The findings indicate that European LTC policies promote active social citizenship to different degrees and that we have to consider whether strengthening older people's active role coexists with generous social rights to publicly‐funded care in order to understand the consequences for their social risks.