Social Investment Approach Research Articles

Ageless Assets: Social Investment and Active Aging Profiles in Lithuania

This article argues that the aging population significantly affects the welfare state. Social investment strategies could respond to a changed economic and social order by enhancing active aging. While the social investment perspective has been a topic of discussion for decades, certain aspects remain underexplored. This study, therefore, aims to assess the impact of social investments on active aging. The study, based on the social investment approach and active aging model, analyzes quantitative data from Wave 8 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The Lithuania sample included 1437 participants. In the analytical phase, Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis were utilized (SPSS ver. 26). The findings unveil four active aging profiles (low activity, moderate activity, balanced activity, and high activity). The two groups are distinguished by aging conditions, such as poor health, lack of social investment, and high reliance on social benefits. The positive impact of social investment is underscored by the improved aging conditions outlined in the last two profiles. This study enriches the social investment research domain by providing valuable insights into the influence of social investment policies on the lives of older individuals and their potential to age actively.

The ‘two lives’ of Esping‐Andersen and the revival of a research programme: Gender equality, employment and redistribution in contemporary social policy

AbstractThis article makes two conceptual contributions to social policy literature. First, we summarise key concepts and insights from Gøsta Esping‐Andersen's major books, tracing his work in ‘two lives’: ‘the foundations, or the welfare state between states and markets’ and ‘the demographic turn’. Analysing the ‘first life’, we revisit the centrality of the decommodification and social stratification concepts and the seeds of the social investment approach. Further, we explore Esping‐Andersen's masterful analysis of the double bind of the welfare state (supporting full‐employment and redistributional harmony) in a post‐industrial era and how countries belonging to different regimes have dealt with it. Through his ‘second life’, we explore the ‘impossible marriage’ between full employment and equality, and the development of the social investment approach. Our second contribution is to critically analyse a tension—generated by the shift from a broad to a narrow social policy perspective—between the two lives and how it raises questions for contemporary social policy. We suggest the field should take stock of Esping‐Andersen's work holistically, going beyond a simplistic use of welfare regime typologies and the universal proposition of a Scandinavian‐style social investment approach. This approach tends to overlook factors related to the international context (e.g., the expansion of the market logic, and questions of exchange, inflation and debt) when assessing the impact of social policy on key outcomes. Our ultimate goal is to revive a research programme based on the integration between social policy and international political economy, a programme geared at critically assessing issues related to gender equality, employment and redistribution.

Problematizing Child Maltreatment: Learning from New Zealand’s Policies

Since all policies address problems, they necessarily include implicit or explicit constructions of these problems. This paper explores how child maltreatment has been constructed in New Zealand’s child protection policies. It questions the underlying assumptions of this problem construction and seeks to shed light on what has been omitted. Utilizing a qualitative content analysis of eight key policy documents, this study reveals the construction of child maltreatment has been dominated primarily by a child-centric, risk-focused approach. This approach assigns blame and shifts responsibilities onto parents and families. In addition, the vulnerability discourse and social investment approach underpinning this perspective have allowed important structural factors, such as poverty and inequality, to remain unaddressed. This paper also highlights the one-dimensional focus on the lower social class to control future liabilities. We suggest that the harm inflicted by corporations on children’s well-being is another form of child exploitation currently omitted from the problem construction. We suggest that child abuse should be defined and understood in policy as harm to children’s well-being and argue that the state should prevent and mitigate harm by addressing structural forces of the problem as well as protecting children against corporate harms.

Funding Primary Care for Better Outcomes

This article reviews a recent report advocating transformational change in the funding and recruitment of staff for Aotearoa New Zealand’s primary care services, including taking a social investment approach to the funding of primary care. The article develops these arguments and discusses new accountability frameworks for primary care delivery, including financial incentives for improving treatment of chronic conditions and collaborative approaches to communityled initiatives to promote preventive healthcare, drawing on a wide range of literature, including mātauranga Māori.

How impact investing funds invest in social‐purpose organizations: A cross‐country comparison

AbstractImpact investing funds (IIFs) are a type of investment fund that aims to achieve both financial and social goals, and they have become a valuable resource for social purpose organizations (SPOs) seeking capital. Our research evaluates the investment process by comparing approaches in two countries, Italy and Australia. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with 9 IIFs and 12 SPOs and used the Gioia Methodology to conduct the data analysis. We found both similar features and divergences. The investing process by IIFs in Australia is conservative, more risk averse and more profit‐oriented with a predominant “finance‐first” strategy. By contrast, in Italy there is a clear preference for “impact‐led” investment. We argue this illustrates a fundamental difference in investment philosophy and that IIFs in the two countries navigate, interpret, and understand the field of impact investment in contrasting ways. Finally, we contribute to the growing literature on impact investing by putting forward an “ideal” impact investment process that respects the integrity and peculiarities of the Social Impact Investment approach.

Maternal Employment and Childcare Use from an Intersectional Perspective: Stratification along Class, Contractual and Gender Lines in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK

Abstract Connecting streams of feminist and comparative social policy literature, this article investigates stratification in maternal employment and childcare use along class, contractual, and gender lines across six countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) and five family policy models. Detailing the different stratifying factors that intervene in the relation between maternal employment and childcare use offers a concrete analysis of the complex link between social reproduction and work. Employing multivariate regressions and EU-SILC (2007–2018) data, it provides an intersectional perspective to the literature. First, we observe a process of formalization in childcare use with a parallel reduction of nonformal care for couples; this process is slower for single mothers. Second, we document a paradox in relation to the social investment approach: the relation between childcare use and maternal employment is stronger in countries that recently expanded childcare to modify their male-breadwinner orientation, but in these countries childcare use is more stratified along class/contract types, a concern for the outcomes of social investment strategies outside of Scandinavia. Being out of work, being in a lower social class, fulfilling domestic tasks and/or care activities, and having an atypical contract negatively correlates with childcare use in most countries. Third, households where partners have more similar earning levels use childcare to a greater extent. The article also provides models employing different dependent and independent variables, alternative family structures, full and part-time work, formal and nonformal childcare, and rich country details.

The limits of social investment and the resilience of long-term care

This article investigates the extent to which a social investment paradigm has guided policy reforms in long-term care for the elderly in France and the Netherlands and how this relates to the resilience of the sector during the Covid-19 pandemic. It conceptualizes the theoretical impact of social investment on long-term care policy and analyzes its use to justify reforms since the early 2000s. It concludes that social investment has not played any role in Dutch long-term care reforms and a moderate role in France. Meanwhile, in both countries a neoliberal emphasis on the efficiency of the market has contributed to a rise in for-profit service provision and fragmentation of the long-term care sector. While long-term care provision in both countries proved relatively resilient in the first phase of the pandemic, at a later stage its resilience was undermined by fragmentation and marketization, limiting the government's ability to respond adequately to new challenges and, crucially, to improve working conditions in the sector. The article concludes that a social investment approach cannot resolve these problems and that there is a need for a new paradigm that acknowledges the inherent value of care work and prioritizes the long-term sustainability of care provision.

The marble cake of social services in Italy and Spain: Policy capacity, social investment, and the national recovery and resilience plans

This article analyses the potential implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the infrastructure of social services in Italy and Spain. Drawing from the policy capacity framework and focusing on childcare and elderly care, we investigate how the National Recovery and Resilience Plans are likely to impact the core functions of the social investment approach. Through document analysis, the article shows that, whereas the infrastructure of the social service system remains characterised by a ‘marble cake’ type of institutional arrangement combining national and subnational responsibilities, attempts have been made by the central governments to steer the social investment policy capacity at the organisational and systemic levels. We argue that the pandemic represents a window of opportunity to rethink the overall system of intergovernmental relations in the field of social services.

Contemporary European Welfare State Transformations and the Risk of Erosion of Social Rights: A Normative Analysis of the Social Investment Approach

Over the last decades, there has been a huge debate on the transformations of the European Welfare State. The issue of its financial sustainability together with the emergence of new social risks has put under pressure the traditional model of social protection and created the conditions for a change in the gist of the welfare state provisions. In this context, the social investment approach has become an emerging reference paradigm to tackle new social risks and meet the need to recalibrate the European welfare state and ensure its economic sustainability. However, despite this success, social investment still seems to be a rather ambiguous concept, too vague to result in precise and univocal policy prescriptions and open to the risk of a stretch of its interpretation by neoliberal politics, to erode social rights. In this paper we propose a theoretical framework to better clarify the normative ground, the moral foundation and political justification of the social investment approach and to understand whether it can avoid the risk of the erosion of social rights.

Türkiye’de Sürdürülebilir Temalı Fonların Geleneksel Fonlarla Karşılaştırmalı Performans Analizi

Sustainable finance aims to contribute to the development of an environmentally and socially sensitive production approach of economic activity in order to leave a more livable world to future generations with an environmental and social investment approach. It increases the importance of comparing the performances of sustainable-themed funds with traditional themed funds, for investors to consider investing with a socially responsible investment approach. In this study, the performances of sustainable-themed funds with traditional funds and indices in Turkey were analyzed comparatively. BIST Sustainable index (XUSRD) as the market index of sustainable funds; the BIST100 index (XU100) was chosen as the market index of traditional funds. Since the history of sustainable funds in Turkey is not very old, daily data for the years 2019-2022 were analyzed as the data period. In the study, firstly, the performances of the funds were compared with annual return, standard error, Sharpe ratio, Jensen's alpha and Treyner criterion. Then XU100 and XUSRD were selected as the market portfolio, and the returns and systemic risks of the portfolios were obtained with the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). According to the results obtained from the study, it has been observed that the performance of sustainable themed funds is better than their traditional substitutes and market indices.

Promoting social goals through economisation? Social investment and the counterintuitive case of homelessness

Within the welfare state literature, critics of social investment have argued that its economic logic replaces ‘social’ considerations (for example, focused on rights/needs) and that this could reinforce the marginalisation of vulnerable populations, as they are unattractive ‘human capital’. Against this background, this article focuses on the counterintuitive case of the social investment approach to homelessness promoted by the European Commission. Through the comparison with previous EU initiatives in the homelessness field, the analysis reveals that while social investment partially replaces values-based logics with the economic rationale, it involves the same ‘solutions’ as values-oriented approaches, that is, preventing/combating homelessness can be justified interchangeably following an ‘economic’ or a ‘social’ logic. To explain this paradoxical result, the article draws from the political economy literature, which shows how disadvantage can be transformed into an investment object. Overall, this study suggests understanding social investment as a paradigm that attempts to promote the ‘social’ through its economisation.

Comparison of the Economically-Based Social Investment Approach of Neoliberalism and the Moral-Based Social Welfare Approach of the Islamic Economics

Ekonomik gelişimin temel göstergelerinden biri refah düzeyidir. Refah düzeyi, bir toplumda devlet tarafından uygulanan politikaların sosyal adalet bağlamında olmasını simgelemektedir. Sosyal adalet insanlar arasında vuku bulan sosyal eşitsizlikleri azaltma amacı gütmektedir. Bu çerçevede, devletler bireylere vergiler yoluyla sosyal transferler sağlamakta ve gelirin yeniden dağılımında aracı rol üstlenmektedir. Bu anlamda, refah devletlerinin rolü yalnızca sosyal transferler yoluyla fayda sağlamak olmamaktadır. Bunun ötesinde, devletler yaptıkları düzenlemelerle diğer refah paydaşları olan piyasa ve sivil toplum aktörlerini de sürece dahil ederek sosyal refahı sağlamaktadır. Ancak, ülkelerin refah anlayışları bütüncül sosyal refah açısından farklılık göstermektedir. Bu açıdan, İslam ekonomisinin refah yaklaşımı temelde ahlaki değerleri önceleyen, ekonomik refahı toplumsal dengeyi gözeterek sağlamayı amaçlayan bir yaklaşımdır. Bu minvalde, insanların temel ihtiyaçlarının sağlanması ve sosyal yardımın ötesinde gelir ve servet eşitsizliğini azaltıcı ekonomi politikalarının iktisadi yapının dönüşümü adına uygulanması öngörülmektedir. Bununla birlikte, İslam ekonomisiyle neoliberal ekonomik anlayış pek çok açıdan farklılık gösterdiği gibi, benzer şekilde neoliberal temelli sosyal yatırım ve İslam ekonomisinin refah yaklaşımı da farklılık göstermektedir. Bu bağlamda çalışmanın amacı, İslâm ekonomisinin sosyal refah anlayışı ve neoliberalizm temelli sosyal yatırım anlayışı, sosyal refah ve muhafazakâr yaklaşımları ile birlikte teorik yönden tartışmak ve perspektiflerini ayrıntılı bir şekilde ortaya koymaktır.

Place-Sensitive Social Investment and Territorial Cohesion: Implications for Sustainability

This theoretical paper presents a review of existing literature on the Social Investment (SI) approach to social policy and its underlying and under-explored territorial dimension. The SI approach has been debated and promoted mainly at national and supranational level, while the territorial dimension has been relatively underestimated in the policy as well as in the academic debate. A place-sensitive approach should be included within the analytical framework when addressing the territorial articulation of SI, as territorial-related variables may foster or hinder SI policies. Therefore, we provide a theoretical frame to articulate the territorial dimension of SI, and we discuss relevant points of contact between Social Investment and Territorial Cohesion. First, we provide a critical discussion about Social Investment approach, with the simultaneous aim of highlighting the gaps and the flaws, among which we focus on the territorial dimension of these policies. Second, we argue that this territorial dimension is related to the interaction between four main factors: (1) The reliance on the provision of capacitating services; (2) the process of institutional rescaling; (3) the persistence of spatial inequalities at subnational levels; and (4) the characteristics of the knowledge and learning economy. Third, we explore the relationship between place-sensitive Social Investment and Territorial Cohesion, discussing potential implications for sustainable development. The work is a theoretical reflection based on the HORIZON2020 project COHSMO “Inequality, Urbanization and Territorial Cohesion: developing the European social model of economic growth and democratic capacity”.

From South to North in the globalised world of early childhood education and care: varied national and local responses in selected countries

This article analyses the neoliberal transformation of ECEC in five selected countries (Germany, Slovakia, Indonesia, Nepal, and Kenya). Both the Global South and the Global North are represented. The countries were selected either because of the authors’ involvement in research in the respective country or because of their long-term personal experience of that particular system of ECEC. The knowledge the authors acquired enabled them to delve deeper into the question of the point at which ECEC systems encounter neoliberal education policy and to describe the different ways in which the countries have adapted to the new policies. The article shows that neoliberal education policies require different types of adaptation and that these may have very different effects on the system of ECEC – from a change in concept to system convergence and practical resistance or total governance of the ECEC sector. The article contributes to a more granular understanding of the effect of the economising discourse on the ECEC sector. Keywords: ECEC, social investment approach, EU, Germany, Slovakia, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Global North, Global South

Risk Privatisation and Social Investment – Self-Employment in the United Kingdom

Abstract With increasing numbers of self-employed persons in the United Kingdom (UK) struggling to protect themselves via personal savings or private insurance against work-related social risks (an issue that has gained further importance in light of the Covid-19 pandemic), this article first discusses self-employment as a type of work that implies intrinsically privatised forms of risk management. Secondly, current social policy interventions towards vulnerable self-employed persons in the United Kingdom (UK) are analysed to identify the mix of instruments used for, on the one hand, investment and support and, on the other hand, conditionality, coercion and activation. Finally, we explore how responsibilities for risk management manifest themselves and argue that the expansion of activation and conditionality increases pressures upon self-employed workers with insufficient incomes and thus indicates a far-reaching risk privatisation, while undermining the idea of a meaningful social investment approach.

Social investment in the knowledge-based economy: new politics and policies

ABSTRACT This themed issue entitled Social Investment in the Knowledge-Based Economy aims to investigate desirable policy packages of social investment for the knowledge-based economy, the interactions between policy and economic inequality, and political and institutional configurations that shape policies. This introduction to our themed issue situates the contribution of the volume in the literature, summarizes the main findings and their implications, and identifies core issues for a future research agenda. We trace the development of the social investment approach over time and across regions, and we explain its logic and the accumulated evidence supporting its importance. We then link our contributions squarely to the transition to the knowledge economy and the concern with innovation, growth, and inequality. We summarize the policy lessons emerging from the individual articles which emphasize specifically the need to treat social investment as complementary to social protection. We also summarize the insights into the politics of generating support coalitions for the introduction of effective social investment policies, emphasizing the leadership role of political parties in shaping both public preferences and legislation. Finally, we outline some key unanswered questions, among them questions regarding the obstacles to major progress in social investment so far and the impact of immigration and party system fragmentation on future progress.

FROM THE WELFARE STATE TO THE SOCIAL INVESTMENT STATE

This paper discusses the basic rationale which has inspired the intellectual and policy reorientation towards “social investment”, with particular attention to child policy. The firstsection outlines the main features of the social investment approach, contrasting it with the more traditional “Fordist” approach. The second and third sections explain why and how early childhood education and care canmake a difference in termsofbothefficiencyandequity.Thefourthsectionbrieflysummarizes the British experience under New Labour, while the fifth section discusses issues of quality and accessibility. The conclusion wraps up, underlining the need to step up the shift to- wards social investment, overcoming the political obstaclesto reform.

The Role of Evidence Informed Policy Making in Delivering on Performance: Social Investment in New Zealand

This case study represents the first in a planned series of studies on the ‘The Role of Evidence Informed Policy Making in Delivering in Performance’. The case study is based on both interviews with key stakeholders and desk research. It focuses on the social investment approach in New Zealand, which is an evolving approach to thinking long-term and making informed choices on how best to improve people’s wellbeing. Social investment brings together different tools and approaches to good governance, building on the respective strengths of performance management and evidence informed policy making. At its core, social investment involves using data and evidence to understand customer needs from a person centric and long-term perspective, proposing innovative solutions that meet citizens’ needs and deliver financial savings, evaluating programmes to identify what works and what doesn’t, and publishing these results openly and feeding findings into the next set of decisions. The case study concludes with a number of recommendations for improving the social investment approach in New Zealand. These recommendations are also relevant to other jurisdictions trying to strengthen the capacity for evidence informed policy making.

Is labour market policy heading for social investment in European countries?

AbstractFrom a perspective of social investment, this article analyses monetary efforts made by European countries in terms of active and passive labour market policy (LMP) between 2006 and 2015. How did spending evolve under the double impression of the social investment discourse and the crisis after 2008? How does LMP now differ from what it was before the crisis? We find that there is no real trend towards social investment in the field of LMP in recent years. This shows both in the relationship between passive and active spending and in the composition of active spending. In particular, training – crucial to a social investment approach – is further weakened in most countries’ policy arrangements. Concerning levels of spending, it is shown that labour market policy gets fiscally more demanding on aggregate, while the amount of resources made available to the average individual job seeker shrinks. Spending on LMP also remains very unequal between European countries.

Gender Division of Childcare and the Social Investment Approach to Welfare State in South Korea

Gender Division of Childcare and the Social Investment Approach to Welfare State in South Korea