Welfare State Context Research Articles

Urban food security during COVID-19: The limits of statutory welfare and the role of community action in Sweden and Korea

During COVID-19, the demand for food relief exploded as vulnerable people were suddenly more numerous and visible than ever, for which statutory welfare was not ready to cope with. We examine the role of voluntary and community organizations (VCOs) in food relief in Stockholm, Sweden and Seoul, Korea. Interpretive analysis of interview materials reveals how VCOs perceive their role vis-à-vis the state and take actions against urban food insecurity during the pandemic. The limits of statutory welfare in reaching out to vulnerable individuals reserve an indispensable role for community action in food relief even with the well-developed welfare state. Despite starkly different welfare state contexts, VCOs in both cases complement statutory welfare by swiftly identifying the risk of hunger and organizing community actions to meet the emergent needs. Given that Sweden and Korea represent the least likely cases to observe welfare provision by VCOs, the findings may have implications to general understanding of VCOs as indispensable welfare provider.

The intersection of welfare stigma, state contexts and health among mothers receiving public assistance benefits

The stigmatizing nature of the US welfare system is of particular importance not only because it has shown to deter eligible applicants from participating in public assistance programs despite facing economic hardship, but also because stigma is an important fundamental cause of health inequities. Although scholars agree stigma is shaped by individual and contextual dimensions, the role of context is often overlooked. Given the heterogeneous nature of US state welfare environments, it may be critical to consider the ways in which state policy, social and economic contexts condition the relationship between welfare stigma and health. Using a multilevel lens, this study first examined the impact of experienced and perceived welfare stigma on self-reported health among female public assistance recipients with children. Second, we assessed the moderating effect of uneven state TANF policies, income inequality, and negative public welfare attitudes in shaping these associations. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study merged with state-level economic and social measures, we employed a series of multilevel logit models with random effects. Findings show experiences and perceptions of welfare stigma are significantly linked to poor health regardless of state contexts, and outcomes vary markedly by race, ethnicity and education. States with strong anti-welfare attitudes amplified the relationship between experienced welfare stigma and poor health for Black and Hispanic mothers, and state economic contexts modified the relationship between experienced welfare stigma and poor health for mothers with less than a high school education. TANF generosity had no moderating effect on health suggesting state policy environments have limited ability to protect welfare recipients against the stigmatizing effects of the US welfare system. Results have implications for explaining stigma related disparities in health within the context of U.S. welfare environments and informing policies that may be key levers for reducing health inequities.

The politics of emotion in a parenting support programme for refugees in Norway

Enhancing social skills among citizens who are considered at risk is one of the ways in which a welfare state handles marginalised groups (Prieur et al, 2020). Universalised programmes represent a common way of strengthening the social capabilities of groups deemed in need of such skills (for example, Pettersvold and Østrem, 2019). In this article, we show that emotions perform a political role in such programmes. We proffer our arguments on the basis of data from five training sessions in the International Child Development Programme (ICDP) in a mid-sized Norwegian municipality. Mentors who are teaching the ICDP course use emotions to signal the superiority of the ICDP as a parenting ideal in the Norwegian welfare context. Positive other-emotions are used to signal equality and to welcome the refugees to take part in the ICDP. The mentors also control the balance of emotional energy and display sympathy. The emotions displayed by mentors underline the ICDP values as superior. Our analysis draws on the theoretical perspectives of emotions as place claims by Candace Clark (1990; 2007) and the cultural politics of emotion by Sarah Ahmed (2014). With the help of these perspectives, we suggest that the performativity of emotions during ICDP training aligns with broader political processes that imply that refugees are welcomed on the premise that they adapt to parenting practices that are acceptable in the new welfare-state context in which they are situated.

Anxiety and trust in times of health crisis: How parents navigated health risks during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark

In this article, we investigate how parents of children in primary school navigated risks in the context of COVID-19 mitigation policies during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Denmark, this group found itself at the front line of the reopening after an early lockdown, as primary schools were among the first institutions to reopen. This situation was discussed by the parents amid much controversy, which prompted us to investigate the strategies of different groups of parents within their institutional contexts. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 key informants, supplemented by a qualitative survey completed by 31 parents, collected between April and July 2020, we find three main types of strategies for dealing with pandemic health risks: (1) those involving trust, especially in schools and in teachers; (2) those primarily characterised by prioritising other aspects, such as the work-life balance; (3) and those containing overt or covert resistance strategies. Our findings demonstrate the pivotal role of the perceived trustworthiness of institutions (mainly schools) and professionals (mainly teachers) at the frontline for shaping parental risk navigation strategies. As our sample included asylum seekers whose resistance – unlike that of other parents employing resistance strategies – was met by an intervention, our analysis also sheds light on how social exclusion manifests itself in the Danish welfare state context during a pandemic.

Gender differences in fresh vegetable intake from 1979 to 2017 in Finland

PurposePrevious research has shown that in contemporary societies, women have a healthier dietary intake than men. However, no research has examined how this gender gap develops over the long term. The present study examined how gender differences in fresh vegetable intake frequency have evolved from 1979 to 2017 in Finland and whether differences are affected by age or educational level.Design/methodology/approachThe data were derived from annually repeated, nationally representative “Health Behaviour and Health among the Finnish Adult Population” and “Regional Health and Well-being (RHW)” surveys on the health habits of the Finnish population. The dataset is a time series of repeated cross-sectional surveys. In total, the data sample comprised 161,996 Finns aged 20–64 years. Descriptive methods and logistic regression were used for the analysis.FindingsDuring 1979–2017, the prevalence of daily vegetable intake increased from 12 to 35% among men and from 18 to 56% among women. Thus, the magnitude of the gap between genders doubled across the study period. The increased vegetable intake was partly explained by the changing education and age structures of society. Potential explanations and avenues for future research are also discussed. Policy implications depend on whether the findings are interpreted as a case of health differences or health inequality.Originality/valueThis study used a long time series to analyse how gender differences in vegetable intake have evolved in a Nordic welfare state context. It showed that the gap in fresh vegetable intake between men and women has widened.

Foster children’s views of family: A systematic review and qualitative synthesis

BackgroundResearch reveals that children with childhoods characterised by placement(s) in foster care have particularly complex and multi-dimensional understandings of family. Given the changing nature of family forms and meanings, and the increased emphasis on children’s voices in decisions about their care and well-being, this review seeks to encapsulate how foster children and former foster children (“foster children”) understand family. ObjectiveThe aim of this review is to comprehensively identify, synthesise, and analyse three decades of qualitative research on current and former foster children’s understanding of family. MethodA systematic review was conducted, using three databases related to social sciences, social work, and family studies to identify relevant qualitative studies in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Using the guidelines of PRISMA statement, 20 studies met the inclusion criteria. A thematic synthesis of the findings was carried out. ResultsFamily was understood by foster and former foster children (1) as biological relatedness, (2) associated with positive emotions, (3) as doing family, and (4) as a choice, reflecting multiple ways of family belonging, in three contexts – kinship, non-kinship, and a combination of the two. Discussion and conclusionFor most foster children (both former and current), biological bonds determine what constitutes family. Some emphasised acts of mutual love, care, support, as well as tolerance and communication as important in defining what constitutes family. Others, however, felt that family is an individual choice. Welfare regimes were highlighted as a possible factor in foster children’s construction of family. We argue that foster children’s meaning and understanding of family in relation to a particular welfare state or local context, would be a welcome addition.

Socioeconomic Inequalities in Mortality After Age 67: The Contribution of Psychological Factors.

Diverging trends of longer lives and increased inequalities in age-at-death invite to updated research on late-life mortality. Earlier studies have identified health behavior, childhood, psychosocial, and material conditions as key determinants of life expectancy, but the role of psychological factors remains a topic of debate. The current study is framed in a life course developmental perspective and assesses the mediating role of secondary control strategies (subjective age) and primary control capacity (perceived control) to socioeconomic (wealth and education) inequality in mortality after age 67. Data are derived from the second wave of the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation study (N=1,432 and age 67–85). All in all, 366 deaths were observed over a mean follow-up of 9.6years. Perceived control was measured by the Pearlin and Schooler Mastery Scale. SA was measured with proportional discrepancy scores in felt age and ideal age. Stepwise Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were conducted to analyze the relative contribution of SES (education and accumulated wealth), felt age, and ideal age discrepancies and perceived control on 11-year mortality. Findings show that lower levels of wealth and perceived control independently predict increased elderly mortality over an 11-year period. Feeling younger and smaller ideal age discrepancies are positively associated with perceived control, but do not account for additional variability in longevity among older adults. Findings add to the interdisciplinary field of socioeconomic inequalities in elderly mortality and underline the specific importance of structural conditions (wealth) and the continued importance of (perceived) primary control capacity for longevity also after age 67. Future research may assess in more detail how wealth and perceived control complement each other in contributing to healthy aging and longevity, for example, by longitudinal research including the role of significant life events in the second half of life in different welfare state contexts.

Integration, cultural preservation and transnationalism through state supported immigrant organizations: a study of Sweden\u2019s national ethnic associations

This paper explores the activities of Swedish state supported ethnic associations (most of which are immigrant organizations), thus shedding empirical light on how immigrants organize with the help of state support, both nationally and transnationally, in a welfare state context. The paper is based on a study of annual reports of 52 state supported national associations, representing more than a thousand (1046) local immigrant organizations, as well as 17 interviews with representatives of the said organizations. The findings indicate that the welfare state did not crowd out civil societal integration-promoting initiatives, but the state supported immigrant organizations came to occupy a niche in which they primarily offered complementary services with the aim of helping members to navigate the public welfare system. Neither did state support directly shape the content and direction of the political activities of the said organizations. However, the state support seems to have generated welfare channeling effects, in that more immigrant organizations came into existence than would have been the case in the absence of grants. The paper comes down in favor of the thesis that state support in some circumstances can promote political incorporation through immigrant organizations (with a few caveats). Finally, the paper proposes a hypothetical mechanism, homeland-oriented integration, for political incorporation through immigrant organization.

Parental income gradients in adult health: a national cohort study

BackgroundDisparities in health by adult income are well documented, but we know less about the childhood origins of health inequalities, and it remains unclear how the shape of the gradient varies across health conditions. This study examined the association between parental income in childhood and several measures of morbidity in adulthood.MethodsWe used administrative data on seven complete Norwegian birth cohorts born in 1967–1973 (N = 429,886) to estimate the association between parental income from birth to age 18, obtained from tax records available from 1967, linked with administrative registries on health. Health measures, observed between ages 39 and 43, were taken from registry data on consultations at primary health care services based on diagnostic codes from the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-2) and hospitalizations and outpatient specialist consultations registered in the National Patient Registry (ICD-10).ResultsLow parental income during childhood was associated with a higher risk of being diagnosed with several chronic and pain-related disorders, as well as hospitalization, but not overall primary health care use. Absolute differences were largest for disorders related to musculoskeletal pain, injuries, and depression (7–9 percentage point difference). There were also differences for chronic disorders such as hypertension (8%, CI 7.9–8.5 versus 4%, CI 4.1–4.7) and diabetes (3.2%, CI 3.0–3.4 versus 1.4%, CI 1.2–1.6). There was no difference in consultations related to respiratory disorders (20.9%, CI 20.4–21.5 versus 19.7%, CI 19.2–20.3). Childhood characteristics (parental education, low birth weight, and parental marital status) and own adult characteristics (education and income) explained a large share of the association.ConclusionsChildren growing up at the bottom of the parental income distribution, compared to children in the top of the income distribution, had a two- to threefold increase in somatic and psychological disorders measured in adulthood. This shows that health inequalities by socioeconomic family background persist in a Scandinavian welfare-state context with universal access to health care.

Motherhood 2.0: Slow Progress for Career Women and Motherhood within the ‘Finnish Dream’

This article investigates the gendered dynamics of motherhood and careers, as voiced by professionals in the knowledge-intensive business sector in Finland. It is informed by the CIAR method through 81 iterative, in-depth interviews with 23 women and 19 men. Among the women respondents with no children, one child, or two children, three dominant forms of discursive talk emerge: ‘It takes two to tango’, ‘It’s all about time management’ and ‘Good motherhood 2.0’. Though Finland provides a seemingly egalitarian Nordic welfare state context, with the ‘Finnish Dream’, women face contradictions between expectations of women as full-time ideal workers pursuing masculinist careers and continuing responsibilities at home, performing ‘good motherhood’. The women’s double strivings meet the double constraining demands of these ideals. The gendered pressures are imposed on the women by themselves, male colleagues, the organisation more broadly and society, leading the women to enact a form of ‘bounded individualism’.

Managing expectations by projecting the future school: Observing the Nordic future school reports via temporal topologies

This study focuses on the politics of time in education by analysing ‘The Future School’ reports published by Nordic state authorities between 2010 and 2015. Building on a system-theoretical understanding of social time, steering and second-order observations, we investigate how temporal political communication frames the future of Nordic basic education. By applying semantic analysis, we identified four temporal topologies according to which these reports deal with the future: (a) calculated futures based on future projections with numbers; (b) unpredictable futures based on future projections contrasting learning with adaptivity; (c) technology-determined futures; and (d) personalised futures based on child well-being. Whereas these topologies constitute a shared semantical base for discussing the future of school education, a comparison of the reports also reveals differences and paradoxes between the temporal topologies in the Nordic welfare state context.

Consequences of prioritisation within long-term care in Denmark, England and Norway: towards increasing inequalities and poorer quality of care?

Prioritisation concerns choosing something before something else, and in a welfare state context, this is about decisions on distribution, redistribution and rationing. This article investigates consequences of prioritisation within long-term care in Denmark, England and Norway. Analysing interviews with policy actors and policy documents, we find that prioritising home care, combined with increasing targeting of help and restricting institutionalised care towards those with the most severe needs, may reduce both service quality and equality for those not being prioritised. Moreover, monitoring and central control of service provision restrict individual discretion of care workers, with implications for service quality.

Gendered employment trajectories and individual wealth at older ages in Eastern and Western Germany.

This study examines the association between employment trajectories and retired men's and women's individual wealth at older ages in the two distinct welfare state contexts of Eastern and Western Germany. Because of the increasing re-marketization of retirement provisions, wealth is becoming increasingly important for retirees' economic well-being. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017), we conduct sequence and cluster analyses to identify groups of typical employment trajectories of men and women in Eastern and Western Germany. For men, we find that continuous full-time employment is positively associated with net wealth at older ages, whereas early retirement and long-term unemployment are negatively associated with wealth. These associations are similar for housing and non-housing wealth in both contexts. For women in Western Germany, a low labour market participation is associated with higher levels of housing wealth and lower levels of non-housing wealth compared with female full-time employees. The results point to gendered wealth accumulation due to differences in men's and women's labour market participation in gender-unequal welfare state contexts. The associations between employment and wealth are slightly weaker in Eastern Germany, indicating that the socialist regime of the GDR restricted the ability to accumulate wealth.

The Political Economy of Regulating for Welfare: Regulation Preventing Loss of Access to Basic Services in the UK, Sweden, the EU, and Israel

What does the state do to prevent consumers from losing access to basic services in the market due to financial hardship, and under what conditions will this occur? Bringing together the literature on regulatory governance and the welfare state, this article compares regulatory regimes that prevent loss of access to services in the UK, Sweden, and Israel in housing credit, electricity, and water, as well as to the electricity and housing credit sectors in the EU, from the early 1990s to the 2010s. The article finds that regulation to address this issue was introduced in all but the Swedish cases. This highlights the significance of the welfare state context in addressing these issues through regulation, as more residual welfare regimes are associated with more social protection through regulation.

The effect of early career social capital on long-term income development in Finland

PurposeIn this study, the authors examine whether social capital embedded in individuals' social networks is connected to employees' long-term income development in Finland.Design/methodology/approachAnalyses are based on 25–35-year-old employees from the Finnish Living Conditions Survey of 1994 combined with register data on earned incomes from 1995 to 2016. The authors used questions addressing the frequency of meeting parents or siblings, spending free time with co-workers and participation in associational, civic or other societal activities as measures of the extent of network capital. Ordered logistic model was used to examine whether the size and composition of social networks differ by gender and socio-economic status. Linear growth curve models were employed to estimate the effect of social capital on long-term income development.FindingsResults indicate minor differences in network composition according to gender, but large differences between socio-economic groups. The authors found that income development was faster for those who participated in civic activities occasionally or who met their relatives or co-workers on a monthly basis, that is, for the “middle group”.Research limitations/implicationsResults are generalizable only to Finnish or Nordic welfare state context. The authors’ measures of social capital come from cross-sectional survey. Thus, the authors are not able to address the stability or accumulation of social capital during life course. This restriction will probably cause the authors’ analysis to underestimate the true effect of social capital on earned incomes.Practical implicationsModerate-level investments to network capital seem to be the most beneficial with regard to the long-term income development.Social implicationsThe study results give support to the idea that social capital can be transformed into economic capital. The results also imply that in economic terms it is important to balance diverse forms of social capital. At the policy level, a special emphasis should be directed to employees with low-socio-economic position. These people are especially vulnerable as their low level of income is combined with network composition that hinders their further income development.Originality/valueThe combined survey and register data give unique insight on how the social capital embedded in individuals' social networks is connected with long-term income development.

Godly husbands and housework: A global examination of the association between religion and men’s housework participation

In studies seeking to understand cultural and institutional influences on the division of domestic labor, religion has often been left out of the picture in favor of economic, gender and welfare state context. By examining men from 34 countries using 2012 International Social Survey (ISSP) data this study explores the ways in which religion is associated with men’s household labor participation. We utilize individual measures of religiosity as well as cultural zones based on religious and cultural similarity to analyze the effect of predominant religion and religious participation on men’s housework. Differences emerge between men by religious tradition, level of religious attendance, and across cultural zones. Contrary to expectations, we find increased religious participation at the individual and cultural zone levels associated with greater participation in some housework tasks and time spent on housework, though the findings show great variation by task and religious tradition. Our findings indicate two potential paths leading to men’s increased housework participation: a nonreligious, egalitarian one, and a religious, family-centered one.

Homelessness and critical realism: a search for richer explanations

Homelessness is an increasingly prevalent social problem with devastating consequences. Yet homelessness causality literature is characterised by confusion due to a diversity of homelessness definitions, research approaches, understandings of causality and welfare state contexts. To bring some clarity, homelessness literature is first categorised as having risk factor, pathways, subjective or theoretically orientated research approaches—each of which is evaluated for its capacity to explain homelessness. Second, the philosophy of critical realism is presented as a meta-theoretical approach with potential to strengthen the explanatory power of homelessness research. This paper offers both a systematic summary of the core principles of critical realism and suggests seven practical implications of using its epistemological and ontological assumptions to guide better homelessness research.

‘Effortful’, ‘needy’ and ‘freeloader’

Abstract This article provides a rhetorical discourse analysis of constructions of unemployed people’s deservingness. Data consist of transcripts from Finnish parliament members debating the ‘Activation Model for Unemployment Security’, from December 2017. In the analysis, three discursive constructions of unemployed people’s deservingness were identified: an ‘effortful citizen lacking control’, a ‘needy citizen deserving the welfare state’s reciprocal acts’ and an ‘undeserving freeloader in need of an attitude adjustment’. Analysis focuses on how deservingness and undeservingness are rhetorically accomplished and treated as factual in parliament members’ accounts. The analysis pays particular attention to the question of how speakers build factuality through the management of categories, extreme case formulations, ‘truth talk’ and maximisation and minimisation strategies. The results reflect the negotiated nature of deservingness as well as varying constructions of unemployed people’s responsibility in the contemporary Nordic welfare state context.

Helping older parents in Europe: the importance of grandparenthood, gender and care regime

ABSTRACT In ageing societies, it is not uncommon to enter grandparenthood while one’s own parents are still living. Thus, a pertinent question is whether it matters for provision of help to parents if adult children have grandchildren they look after. Earlier studies addressing help to more generations conclude that providing help to one generation increases the likelihood of helping another, and not the contrary. Here, we investigate whether gender and welfare state context make a difference for this finding by using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and the Norwegian Life course, Ageing and Generation study. The 14 countries included represent four different care regimes. Overall, we find that adult children who have grandchildren they look after on a weekly basis are more inclined to provide weekly help and care to parents compared to those without such frequent grandchild care responsibilities. However, the results suggest that gender and care regime matter. Helping more generations seems easier in some contexts than in others, and the contrasts across regimes are considerably greater for women than for men. When there are few alternatives to family care, many (women in particular) may have to prioritise which generation to help.

Invited Commentary: Social Cohesion, Depression, and the Role of Welfare States.

In this issue of the Journal, Baranyi et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2019;000(00):000–000) examine the longitudinal associations of perceived neighborhood disorder and social cohesion with depressive symptoms among persons aged 50 years or more in 16 different countries. An important contribution of their article is that they study how neighborhood-level social capital relates to depression in different welfare-state contexts. Although the authors provide empirical evidence for some significant differences between welfare states in the relationship between social capital and depression, they say little about potential explanations. In this commentary, I draw attention to welfare-state theory and how it could provide us with a greater understanding of Baranyi et al.’s findings. I also discuss the potential downsides of grouping countries into welfare regimes. I primarily focus on the associations between social cohesion and depression, as these associations were generally stronger than those for neighborhood disorder and depression. Finally, I provide some suggestions for future research within the field and discuss whether the findings could be used to guide policies aimed at increasing social cohesion and health.