Social Investment Policies Research Articles

INVESTING IN PRESCHOOL AGE CHILDREN – A CASE STUDY OF VIDZEME REGION (LATVIA)

Social investments are important for a child’s development and future success. Parental leaves and Early Childhood Education and Care services (ECEC) are among main forms of social investment, contributing to child poverty reduction and increasing equality, as well as underpinning the potential for skilled workers in the future. The aim of the paper is to analyse availability of the main forms of social investment in preschool age children - early childhood education services and parental leaves, in Vidzeme region (Latvia) for a case study. An analysis of policy documents, parents’ surveys at pre-school institutions, interviews with education institution representatives and local authorities regarding education and social matters were conducted in the research. The support system for parents is still dominated by the “passive” form of support system. However, social investment policies are becoming increasingly more important. This is achieved by supporting parents' access to social investment services and by increasing the amount of parental leave benefits. In 2013-2015 funding for child-care and family policy has increased. Expenditure growth was mostly affected by an increase in the allowance for childcare and the minimum parental allowance. The availability of ECEC is moderate, but since 2009 private institutions and since 2013 babysitting services have been co-funded at the national level till May 31, 2016 to improve it. Since September 2015 a 3-year innovative project “Vouchers for the provision of child minder services to workers with nonstandard work schedules” has been introduced too, to promote parental employment and work and family balance. In Vidzeme region, for example, service availability is additionally stimulated by free transport services, ECEC fee discounts for poor, low-income and large families, etc. Results show that the availability of ECEC has been improved and there has been signs of positive changes in children’s development. Nevertheless, the availability of ECEC is moderate, and in some poorer municipalities in Latvia Matthew effects can be spotted – the middle and highest strata of society use services to a higher extend then the low-income society.

Public opinion on policy and budgetary trade-offs in European welfare states: evidence from a new comparative survey

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the ‘Great Recession’, welfare states have entered a new phase of austerity. Simultaneously, new social risks and the rise of the knowledge economy fuel new demands on the welfare state. We analyse how demands for social investment policies – particularly education – come into conflict with budgetary concerns, using new survey data on individual-level preferences in eight European countries. Paying particular attention to fiscal and budgetary trade-offs, we find that social investments are generally very popular, but as soon as realistic budget constraints are added, public support drops considerably. The largest drop occurs when social investments would be financed with cutbacks in social transfers rather than higher taxes or higher public debt levels. Furthermore, when studying the determinants of preferences, we find that in the era of permanent austerity distributive conflicts within welfare states exhibit a different political dynamic than conflicts about the size of the welfare state.

Conflictive preferences towards social investments and transfers in mature welfare states: The cases of unemployment benefits and childcare provision

This article explores potential cleavages and conflicts between political support coalitions of social investment versus classical social transfer policies. To that extent, we analyse international survey data from the European Social Survey (ESS) for 21 European countries. Our central finding is that different welfare state beneficiary groups perceive and react negatively to increased government involvement in policy fields from which they do not benefit themselves: single parents are more likely to oppose government support for the unemployed when long-term replacement rates in the unemployment benefit scheme are high. Vice versa, the unemployed are less likely to support the public provision of childcare services if the latter is already well-funded. This finding has implications for the study of welfare states in general because it implies that in mature welfare states, political conflicts may be less about the welfare state as such, but about the distribution of welfare state services and benefits between different groups of beneficiaries.

Social investment policies and the European Union: Swimming against the neoliberal tide?

The European Commission’s social investment strategy, which holds that social policy expenditure should be at least partially channelled towards investment into people’s capacities, has been severely criticised. Some scholars have even categorised social investment as an outright neoliberal reform. However, the actual content of the reform imperative has been neglected in the discussion. Through qualitative content analyses divided into privatisation, marketisation and liberalisation, this article examines the (non)-neoliberal policy instruments embedded in the European Social Investment Package. For privatisation, the policy documents were found to propose universal benefits and services, but at the same time propounded benefits that targeted low-income groups and ‘make work pay’. Marketisation stressed competition and market-based financial tools as well as managerial instruments for public administration, but evaded any reference to non-competition-based means, such as social insurance. Liberalisation addressed existing barriers to labour mobility, reinforced individual rights to equal opportunity and responsibilities and restored the role of institutions to advance social investment. Consequently, we argue that inherent ambivalence hinders any assessment of these policies as neoliberal, but they cannot be categorised as in opposition to it either.

ICT-enabled social innovation for integrated health- and social care of older people: mapping and analysis

The demographic change in the European Union and the economic crisis with its profound and lasting consequences on its societies and their social protection systems prompted the European Commission to issue the Social Investment Package (SIP) in 2013. The SIP is a comprehensive communication that identifies policy goals and suggests measures to attain them in new yet comprehensive ways in this context. According to the SIP, social innovations can improve the efficiency and adequacy of social policies and the provision of social services in addressing such societal challenges; and can also facilitate life-long investment in personal and community capacities – human capital – to boost personal and community-based coping strategies with challenges when they arise. Such potentials of social innovations are further increased by novel solutions enabled by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The ongoing IESI research project – in its full name 'ICT-Enabled Social Innovation in support to the implementation of the EU Social Investment Package', that is conducted by JRC-IPTS, part of the European Commission's in-house science service – applies a systematic approach to understand better how ICT-enabled social innovation might contribute to social investment policies. It builds a database of ICT-enabled social innovation initiatives – policy-relevant experiences like services, policies or systems – primarily from the Member States of the EU, and documents extensively those that were able to deliver proven benefits on policy-relevant outcomes. During the first two year of the project – that runs until December 2016 – 210 initiatives were mapped and analysed in total in a wide array of social services. The project also develops a general impact assessment framework to capture the benefits to various stakeholders at different levels. Importantly, the IESI research project maintains a particular focus on the policy area of Active and Healthy Ageing and Long-Term Care. Within this focus integrated care – defined here as integration of health- and social care – is of a special interest, as evidence shows that integrated approaches could put older people in the centre of care delivery to meet their needs better and improve the overall care efficiency and productivity; and ICT-enabled solutions could indeed enhance the integration in the background as well as the care provision itself. The proposed definition of ICT-enabled social innovation and the developed conceptual and analytical framework aim to understand better the social innovation potential of ICTs in social policy areas like integrated care. This framework acknowledges that the types of integration could be manifold and more types could be present at the same time at an initiative i.e. integration could take place on funding, administrative, organisational, and delivery system fields. Another important element of this conceptual framework – still from the integration's point of view – is the dimension of various levels that the 'governance of service integration' might form, i.e. across scopes of operations of public authorities and other stakeholders. And finally, but not exhaustively, this conceptual and analytical framework incorporates a dimension that assess the potential that ICTs can play in amending or even transforming the way how initiatives could be operated or even conceived from weak/functionalist to strong/transformative roles. This paper outlines the conceptual and analytical framework developed in full; explains the methodological steps applied in data collection and the building of the database. The paper also provides evidence-based results of this structured mapping and analysis of a sample of 55 initiatives operating in the broader Active and Healthy Ageing and Long-term Care policy area so far, including integrated health- and social care, and presents a 'Knowledge Map' by applying the specific conceptual framework developed. Importantly, all the initiatives analysed showed some systematic evidence on delivering benefits to the providers of the services, the users of services, or both. Results seem to back that technology has a huge potential in the area of Active and Healthy Ageing and long-term care, and the analysed initiatives shows more innovation potential as well as integration-levels than in most of the other social policy areas under scrutiny. Finally, the paper discusses new dimensions that the conceptual and analytical framework could be further enriched with.

‘Assistance from A to Z’ as an Innovative Social Investment in Action. Evaluation of a Case Study

Abstract The aim of the article is to present a case study of the implementation of innovative social investment in the area of social inclusion. The case study analysed, namely the project Assistance from „A” to „Z” — Professional activation of homeless people from Wroclaw Circle St. Brother Albert Aid Society, refers to the social and vocational integration of homeless people at the municipal level in Poland. The authors hypothesize that innovative social investments are key to the success of the policy of social inclusion, which requires new, innovative ideas to empower people at risk of exclusion. The article uses the case study method and the method of desk research, in which an analysis of the strategy documents, source materials and activities was carried out. The results were subjected to critical analysis, using the achievements of research in the field of social investment, social innovation and social inclusion policy. The paper is the result of partial studies carried out within the framework of the research project Innovative Social Investment: Strengthening communities in Europe (InnoSI), financed by the EU Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020. As a result, one has to consider the question “What works?”. The analysis showed the accompaniment method to be the most effective tool in the project’s actions and one which may be disseminated as a recommendation for social investment. The question “How?” brought evidence that the existing set of activities and their sequence (integrity and complexity) was appropriate, necessary and effective from the perspective of beneficiaries, the Wroclaw Circle St. Brother Albert Aid Society and stakeholders. Considering the question “In what circumstances?”, the key element was related to the leadership offered by the Wroclaw Circle St. Brother Albert Aid Society, which was running the implementation of the project. As a conclusion, one can formulate the cautious thesis that the outcomes can to some extent be generalized, particularly at the level of other local entities in Poland or in other countries/regions of Central and Eastern Europe, which have a similar welfare model (e.g. the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia).

From social security to social investment? Compensating and social investment welfare policies in a life-course perspective

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the forms and characteristics of social investment policies and their potential trade-off with social security schemes by assessing developments of welfare spending profiles in 23 European welfare states in the 2000s. I argue that if a social investment turn has indeed occurred, it is not necessarily at the cost of the ‘old’ compensatory policies. Instead, social investment policies and their relation to compensating welfare policies alter with regard to policies targeted at different life-stages and to the type of welfare regime. Therefore, the results attest to a path-dependent trend within the welfare regimes, the Nordic countries remaining clear forerunners in terms of both level and dynamics of social investment policies. European social investment strategies manifest mainly in policies targeting childhood and youth, while a trade-off between social investment and compensating policies is evident in working-age policies to some degree.

The transformative role of the social investment welfare state towards sustainability. Criticisms and potentialities in fragile areas.

The paper discusses criticisms and transformative capabilities ofthe role of social investment policies in fragile areas, as territoriescharacterized by continuous losses in economics of flexibility, that is theuncommitted potentialities for change, learning, adaptation, preservationand evolution. It very briefly presents the social investment main featuresand developments in the transformation of European social policy, beforediscussing some criticisms regarding its current capability in dealing withsocial risks and social exclusion in such contexts. In particular, it addressesthe issues of human capital, productivism and sustainability, arguing for theneed to reflect upon its related assumptions and the opportunity to include amore context-based approach. For this purpose, the paper analyses twoexperiences of community organization through participatory actionresearchimplemented in fragile urban and rural areas, as well as the reasonswhy such kinds of practices could play an important role in identifying andenhancing the transformative potentialities of social investment. Inparticular the latter could be strategically aimed at promoting moresustainable local economies by integrating universalistic/category-basedpolicies with bottom-up context-based interventions, to deal with the rootedcharacteristics that partly cause the problems and partly are the source of thepossible answers.

The social investment approach as a field of job creation. From the ‘recalibration’ to a resurgent trade-off between employment growth and low wage (white) jobs. A comparison between Germany and Italy

ABSTRACTThe social investment approach emerged as a new welfare paradigm, aimed at reconciling the traditional functions of the welfare supply with a productive social agenda, designed at preparing people to confront the ‘new social risks’, whether they be related to the problem of balancing paid work and family responsibilities, upgrading the skills, preventing inequalities and promoting the availability of in-kind services. In order to achieve these objectives, especially those related to care needs and work-life balance, the adoption of social investment-based strategies necessarily implies an expansion of the jobs related to health and social care services. In more recent years, many studies have analysed the limitations of the social investment policies because of their different redistributive impacts on social groups. Several studies have found a higher use of these policies for high-income families. Another source of criticism on social investment is that spending on these policies would seem to crowd out more traditional passive social expenditures. In this article, we examine another question related to the widespread of this approach: what are the effects of the social investment policies in terms of direct job creation? In fact, one of the more controversial issues, related to social investment policies, is their direct contribution to the labour market in terms of both quantity and quality of work within welfare services. The article analyses these issues focusing on Germany and Italy, two countries that represent not only two different care regimes but also two distinct models regarding job creation strategies in the care sector. In doing so, particular attention will be paid to long-term care policies, as they represent one of the pivotal areas of the social investment approach, both in terms of social services, to address new social risks, and new jobs related to welfare services

From perspectives to policy contingencies: Conditional cash transfers as social investments

Despite the popularity of social investment, there remain ambiguities regarding how to design an effective social investment approach. We review evaluations of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Latin America in order to draw out lessons of how to improve the effectiveness of social investment. CCTs share many of the objectives of the social investment approach and are targeted at poorer groups. Since research shows that such groups are often not adequately supported through social investment policies, analyzing CCTs holds particular promise. Our analysis finds that architects of social investment policies should consider three questions when designing a social investment approach: how much investment is necessary to fulfill social investment functions, what is the causal mechanism through which the goals of social investment are to be achieved, and what array of policies are necessary for such mechanisms to be effective?

The digital nudge in social security administration

AbstractThe concept of nudge theory, from the fields of behavioural science, political theory and behavioural economics, has sparked government initiatives yielding significant public value. A nudge is a method for predictably altering behaviour without restricting consumer choice options or significantly changing incentives. Nudges work by leveraging default human behaviour such as the tendency to take the path of least resistance when exercising choice. Government agencies have run many successful trials with simple textual nudges designed to positively influence behaviours such as tax compliance, voter registration and student attrition. This article develops the concept of the digital nudge in social security administration. The digital nudge leverages predictive analytics technology within a digital government framework to support a social investment policy approach. Based on a literature review of nudges within a digital government context, the article identifies examples of innovation within social security administration where nudges are contributing to better social outcomes. At the same time, concerns regarding ethics and privacy are identified as nudges are applied at the individual rather than the population level. The use of data and personal information to drive the nudge process has to be managed in such a way that individual rights are protected. This requirement has to be reconciled with the broader interests of society in achieving affordable outcomes, the parameters of which are determined through the political process.

Reassessing the ‘Social Investment Perspective’ for ‘Inclusive Growth’: Where do Older Workers Fit?

The notion of building welfare around work poses fresh challenges from a life-course perspective, where the situation of older workers has largely been neglected by policymakers committed to the ‘social investment perspective’ – typically constructed as a policy paradigm for ‘human capital’ development in children and young adults (Esping-Andersen, 2002). This article seeks to re-focus attention on the policy challenges relating to the needs of older workers within the new ‘inclusive growth’ agendas that seek to advance equitable opportunities for all. Social investment policies pose a range of issues and challenges for ageing populations that are discussed and examined in detail in this article. If social investment policy is to succeed in ageing OECD societies, it will mean broadening the investment perspective to include the (neglected) education and training needs of older workers to ensure that everyone can contribute to and share in economic prosperity.

WOPSI - The World Politics of Social Investment

This paper is background paper for collaborative research project the World Politics of Social Investment (WoPSI). The WoPSI project is aimed at studying politics of social investment across democratic world from a comparative perspective. The guiding research questions are descriptive as well as causal: How do social investment agendas and social investment policy reforms vary across democratic countries around globe? How can we explain this diversity? Under what political conditions do social investment agendas and/or reforms develop? We are particularly interested in understanding politics (political ideas and discourses, political cleavages and conflicts, political coalitions) surrounding agenda setting and adoption of social investment strategies, policies, and reforms. The aim of this background paper is to situate our project in existing literature, to define our research questions and to develop a theoretical framework that is formulated in a sufficiently general way so that it applies to politics of social investment reform in all democracies around world. The background paper also defines key concepts of our approach. This background paper is aimed at providing interested scholars and potential project team members with a substantial idea of motivation of our project, as well as theoretical and empirical perspective we adopt. It should also allow readers to situate themselves relative to framework we develop in this project, in order to evaluate if they would like to join this collective enterprise.

Two Decades of Social Investment in Latin America: Outcomes, Shortcomings and Achievements of Conditional Cash Transfers

Conditional Cash Transfer programmes (CCTs) have been at the core of the remarkable expansion of social protection in Latin America in the early twenty-first century. Our article reviews the origins of CCTs in the Social Investment (SI) approach to social policy design, explores their characteristics and traces their expansion in Latin America. It further questions whether CCTs designed under the influence of SI can generate long-term substantial improvements in social outcomes. Our analysis suggests that while CCTs have evidently produced a number of positive outputs they are not, on their own, enough to achieve the aim of reducing poverty. CCTs appear to be more effective in poverty alleviation when they are accompanied by – or form part of – a wider package of measures that enhance social and employment rights, integrating workers into the formal economy under better conditions. We conclude that unless the structural deficiencies that shape many of the Latin American welfare regimes are addressed, the potential of social investment policies, like CCTs, to combat poverty will remain limited.

Axiology of socio-humanitarian cognitive and sociocultural types being of man

The goal of the following article is to show that the system of values (ideals and worldview attitudes) affects the nature and results of scientific work of a researcher. It is showed, that socio-cultural and historical conditionality of scientific knowledge is implemented not only by the impact of social institutions, investment policy and state support for science, but also through the system of value orientations of scientists themselves. It was analyzed the axiological views in the application of scientific knowledge to such prominent outstanding thinkers such as I. Kant, H. Rickert, M. Weber, W. Dilthey. We prove that an approach which recognizes that the values in science express socio-cultural conditioning of science, and becomes the determining factor in philosophy of social and humanitarian knowledge. Keywords: axiology, value, cognition, meaning, social and humanitarian cognition, truth as a value

Social Investment and Poverty Reduction: A Comparative Analysis across Fifteen European Countries

AbstractDespite the fact that employment rates have increased in many European countries since the beginning of the 2000s, poverty rates have stagnated and in some countries even increased. In the welfare state literature, it has been argued that these disappointing poverty trends may be partly attributable to the reforming of traditional welfare state programmes into social investment policies, because the latter are less redistributive. To date, there are only a few systematic comparative empirical analyses which focus on the outcomes of social investment policies. This paper contributes to the social investment literature by empirically analysing the distributional effects of shifts from traditional welfare state arrangements to social investment policies in fifteen European countries for the period 1997–2007. Our results suggest that the detrimental effect of social investment policies, described in some specific cases in the literature, cannot be generalised across a larger group of European countries. However, for European countries other than the Nordic countries, the results provide some evidence for a linkage between stagnating or increasing poverty trends and shifts in expenditures to new welfare state programmes.

Global Corporate Citizenship

In 2002, thirty-four chief executives of the world’s largest multinational corporations signed a document during the World Economic Forum (WEF) entitled, ‘Global Corporate Citizenship: The Leadership Challenge for CEOs and Boards’. These included Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, Diageo, Merck & Co., McDonald's Corporation, Philips, and UBS. The WEF had recognized that the notion of corporate citizenship was a business response towards society. The forum urged businesses to engage themselves in social investment, philanthropic programmes and public policy [1]. The WEF believes that corporate global citizenship is fundamentally in the enlightened self-interest of global corporations since their growth, prosperity and sustainability is dependent on the state of the global political, economic, environmental and social landscape [2].GCET’s principles recognize the important dimension and role of tourism as a positive instrument towards the alleviation of poverty and for the improvement in the quality of life of all people. It outlined the principles to guide tourism development and to serve as a frame of reference for different stakeholders in the tourism sector.

Why the Social Investment Approach is Not Enough – The Female Labour Market and Family Policy in the Republic of Korea

AbstractDespite the gradual increase in the female labour market activity rate in most of the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, the rate has been stagnant in the Republic of Korea. The low female employment rate in Korea also reflects the withdrawal of a majority of women at the time of marriage or childbirth, resulting in an M‐shaped pattern. The discourse on social investment attracted much attention from the Kim Dae‐Jung Government (1998–2003) and was more facilitated from the mid‐2000s towards the later period of the Roh Moo‐Hyun Government (2003–08). Against this background and along with a frantic focus on the low fertility rate from the mid‐2000s, the government has expanded expenditure on family policy. In this article, we analyze social investment policies related to female employment and discuss their effect on promoting Korean women to work. We first closely examine the Korean female labour market in three aspects: precarious employment pattern; career breaks; and under‐employment. Based on our policy analysis, we suggest that there is a mismatch in implemented policy and policy preference. Lastly, this article questions how effective social investment policies can be without a consideration of changes in job quality in the Korean female labour market.

A framework for social investment strategies: Integrating generational, life course and gender perspectives in the EU social investment strategy

Since 2013 the European Union has promoted social investments as a national reform strategy to increase individuals’ capacities and national economic growth. However, to take full advantage of social investments, the strategy needs a more coherent framework that takes into account the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of social issues and social investments. Theoretically, this chapter establishes such a framework consisting of generational, life course and gender perspectives on social investments. The generational perspective demonstrates that social investments involve horizontal redistribution, underpin the productive and reproductive social contract between generations and increase diversity within generations. The life course perspective demonstrates how social issues and social investments in one life stage depend on the situation in prior life stages and affect the situation in later life stages and, possibly, in multiple dimensions. The gender perspective shows how social investments can improve economic and social returns when gender and ageing over the life course are taken into consideration. Empirically, cross-national patterns indicate a positive relation between social investment policies and returns.

The Social Protection Floor and the ‘New’ social investment policies in Japan and South Korea

Japan and South Korea have always taken what may be called a social investment approach to their social and economic development policies. They were able to achieve a high level of economic growth, in part, because of their targeted social spending that supported and protected the productive sectors of the society. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a marked shift in the targets of social investment, from predominantly skilled, male, industrial core workers to more peripheral, marginalized, and vulnerable population groups, such as women, children, and the elderly. Moreover, this new policy focus is now increasingly put forward from the perspective of inclusive welfare and the discourse of social inclusion, thus breaking from the earlier productivist thinking. Indeed, recent social investment policy debates in the two countries are often framed in terms of intergenerational equity, social and economic sustainability, and economic democracy. What are these ‘new social investments’, and why the shifts? This article looks at the new social investment policies in Japan and South Korea to understand factors behind the changes, and assess how ‘new’ are these new social investments.