Southern European Welfare States Research Articles

The Religious Foundations of Welfare, Social Inclusion, and Anti‐Immigrant Attitudes in Europe

AbstractThis paper unites disparate literature to test the influence of religious belonging and behavior characteristics along with secular welfare boundaries on anti‐immigrant attitudes. We suggest that welfare states varied in their religious foundations during the transition from religious‐based solidarity to modern state‐based solidarity and formulate a novel analytical framework to hypothesize effects across individuals and welfare regime types. Using eight waves of the European Social Survey (2002–16), we find that religious effects are strongest in welfare states with the most religious foundations, the Southern European welfare states, and weak in the universalist welfare states, which lacked historical state‐church tensions. Other welfare types show a mix of religious effects, with some challenging expectations. Furthermore, Christian majority membership is often associated with heightened anti‐immigrant attitudes, most consistently in contrast to the non‐Christian minority. For welfare‐based forms of inclusion, we find consistent institutional trust effects and two competing logics for secular boundaries: a propensity for welfare chauvinism and a culture of inclusion.

NEET in Turkey: a typology including jobless youths, parental education and employment status as determinants

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to improve understanding of the role of the family as NEET determinants in a country with free education in a Mediterranean or Southern European welfare state, so that the authors can contribute to policy recommendations and offer suggestions for future studies.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used TurkStat (2021) household workforce statistics microdata (TurkStat permit number 10484) for multinomial logistic regression. These microdata are the most detailed data representation of all households in Turkey in 2021, representing all household members (n = 635.159) and young people aged 15–24 years (n = 88.974) in Turkey. Of the data on youth, those not in education or employment constituted the NEET sample (n = 21,729). The authors also used the 2014–2020 household workforce statistics microdata (TurkStat permit number 3188) to explain the proportional changes between the status of NEETs in past years and today.FindingsThe age factor (20–24) and long-term unemployment in men and marital status (for married and divorced) in women are of critical importance for the risk of being NEET. Compulsory education is the most influential factor in reducing the risk of NEET for both genders. The estimations of logistic regression models showed significantly that the increase in the education level of parents decreased the probability of NEET in the household. In particular, the gains of mothers after compulsory education (university, postgraduate education) increased the probability of young people in the household being NEET compared to the education levels of fathers.Originality/valueThe authors make two contributions with this study. First, the authors discuss current microdata and NEET determinants in Turkey, which is the subject of limited research and has one of the highest rates of NEET in the 15–29-years age category (28.7%) in the OECD (2021). Second, the authors are the first to examine parental education or employment for NEETs in Turkey. Findings from the study allow comparison of Turkey and southern European welfare regime countries and fill the gap in the literature on NEET and parent relationship in Turkey with a strong and up-to-date dataset.

The Welfare States and Happiness Inequalities in Europe

Income distribution is a widely used measure of inequality, but in the assessment of welfare it is deemed to be insufficient. When measuring inequality in the distribution of welfare, subjective evaluations such as happiness and life satisfaction should also be taken into account. The purpose of this study was to analyze happiness inequalities in different welfare states in Europe. Overall happiness inequality, as well as happiness inequalities between different socioeconomic groups in these countries , were explored. Furthermore, this study analyzed how these inequalities changed over time. The European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) data set was used for the analysis. Independent sample t-test and one way ANOVA were also used. All analyses were done using the IBM SPSS 22 program. It was found that social democratic welfare states which consistently rank at the top of happiness rankings had the lowest overall happiness inequalities. Happiness inequalities among different sociodemographic population groups were also low in these countries. On the contrary, post-socialist welfare states had the highest happiness inequalities. Compared to employed people the unemployed were significantly unhappy in corporatist countries. Post-socialist and southern European welfare states stood out as having high happiness inequalities between those with good and poor health and between the young and elderly.

Measuring fiscal sustainability in the welfare state: fiscal space as fiscal sustainability

This study measures the fiscal capacity of welfare states to derive parameters for a sustainable welfare state. To secure fiscal soundness, it is critical to maintain affordable welfare spending by ensuring public capacity. Adapting the concept of fiscal space, defined as the difference between the current level of public debt and the debt limit implied by the country’s historical record of fiscal adjustment by Ostry et al. (2010) and Ghosh et al. (2011), this research measures and compares the fiscal sustainability of 17 welfare states. To derive this fiscal space, the debt limit of each country is set, primarily based on the estimating of fiscal reaction function and selecting interest schedule (Ghosh et al. 2011, p. F13). We use a pooled-time-series-cross-sectional model to estimate fiscal reaction function and the vector regression model to set the interest schedule. It is found that Southern European welfare states are unsustainable if they do no immediately change their fiscal policies. Countries outside of Southern Europe are generally financially sustainable. However, the UK, the US, and France have in their recent actions exacerbated their financial sustainability. For their part, the social democratic states remain financially sound, despite high levels of welfare spending. This indicates that welfare spending does not necessarily weaken fiscal soundness, which depends on the type of welfare state.

Southern European welfare states and homelessness: Portugal and Greece

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare homelessness policies in Portugal and Greece.Design/methodology/approachAfter a brief overview of the relationship between welfare regimes and homelessness, the characteristics of homelessness policies within the South-European regime are studied. Subsequently, by employing empirical data, a comparison between the homelessness policies of these two countries is attempted through three axes of analysis: the historical emergence of homelessness policies; the impact of the memoranda, as a series of fiscal measures associated with welfare retrenchment, on the deterioration of homelessness; and the characteristics of the social policies being developed.FindingsIt is noted that the two countries consolidate a residual social intervention model that fails to address homelessness adequately.Originality/valueThis is the first attempt to compare homelessness policies between Portugal and Greece.

Children against parents? The politics of intergenerational recalibration in Southern Europe

AbstractTraditionally, Southern European countries displayed remarkably elderly biased social policy arrangements. This article introduces the notion of intergenerational recalibration to capture reforms aimed at rebalancing the generational profile of Southern European welfare states via the expansion of family policy and social assistance schemes—both monetary benefits and care services—and retrenchment in the field of pensions. Then, it elaborates theoretically on the political dimension of this policy strategy, focusing on the implications of the peculiar combination of expansionary and retrenchment reforms, to advance the hypotheses that domestic politics would prevent the realization of such an agenda, whereas the latter would be favored by a major role of supranational actors, especially the European Union. To test these hypotheses, we systematically analyze policy trajectories in the field of pensions and social assistance in Italy and Spain between the mid‐1990s and 2016. This allows, first, to argue that investment in “pro‐children” measures has not adequately balanced the reduction of pro‐parents expenditure and, second, to question the idea that domestic political incentives to expand “pro‐children” policies are necessarily too weak as well as the “enabling” role of external pressures in pursuing intergenerational recalibration.

Narrowing the gap: the middle class and the modernization of welfare in Italy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer a contribution to our understanding of the changing relations of the middle classes with the Italian welfare state. The paper argues that the new interplay between public and private welfare is based on a very simplified analysis of Italian society.Design/methodology/approachThe paper aims to integrate a variety of different theoretical approaches. The paper makes extensive use of the EU-SILC database, as well as the recently updated historic series of consumer studies undertaken by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The data used in the paper were also drawn from the biennial cross-sectional Survey on Household Income and Wealth carried out by the Bank of Italy.FindingsThe analysis suggests that the problems of Italian society include not only a high incidence of poverty, but also increasing financial constraints for households placed between the established middle class and people in conditions of persistent poverty. The current public-private mix in service delivery appears less and less capable of protecting this social stratum against the growing risk of instability across all life domains, let alone of creating opportunities and fostering social mobility.Originality/valueThe paper explores some ways in which current politics of welfare have been designed with the view of fundamentally changing the welfare regime. It highlights how the public and private welfare mix has been purposefully organized in order to introduce a new model of social protection that aims to overcome certain specific characteristics of Southern European welfare states. It examines the sustainability of this model compared to the real living conditions of the Italian middle classes.

The influence of poor health on competing exit routes from paid employment among older workers in 11 European countries.

Objectives The study aimed to (i) determine the influence of poor health on competing exit routes from paid employment among older workers in Europe, (ii) assess whether these risks are different among welfare state regimes in Europe, and (iii) evaluate differences in estimates between two different competing risk approaches. Methods The study population consisted of 5273 respondents (6-years follow-up) from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The effect of poor health on exit routes from paid employment was assessed with a cause-specific Cox model and a Fine & Gray (F&G) model. These two competing risk analyses were used to calculate absolute risks of labor force exit among welfare state regimes in Europe. Results In both models, poor health was a risk factor for disability benefit [hazard ratio (HR) 3.36; subdistribution hazard ratio (SHR) 3.22], and unemployment (HR 1.43, SHR 1.32). Both models produced similar absolute risks. In countries with a Bismarckian welfare state regime, low-educated older workers living alone and in poor health had an 11% risk of disability benefit, 7% of unemployment, 46% of early retirement, and 7% of becoming economically inactive. In countries with a Scandinavian welfare state regime, the risks were 10%, 7%, 29%, and 3%, respectively, and in Southern European welfare state regimes 4%, 5%, 35%, and 7%. Conclusions Workers with poor health are more likely to leave the labor force than workers with good health. The absolute risks of early retirement and becoming economically inactive were lowest in countries with a Scandinavian welfare state regime. For disability benefit and unemployment, absolute risks were lowest in Southern European welfare state regimes. The direct estimation of absolute risks of leaving the labor force in the presence of competing exit routes is an appealing feature of the F&G model.

Beyond familialism: Recalibrating family, state and market in Southern Europe and East Asia

This Special Issue takes on a new cross-regional comparison between Southern Europe and East Asia in an attempt to identify ‘new politics’ of welfare state adjustments. Departing from the previous literature that overemphasized regional peculiarities of East Asian and Southern European welfare states, our Special Issue highlights family resemblances – among Italy, Japan, Korea and Spain. We argue that these four welfare states – often labelled as ‘familialist’ – share key common characteristics, which in turn experienced very similar policy problems in recent years. Interestingly, despite their initial similarities, these four countries have been trying to cope with new policy problems in different ways. In this process, some are clearly becoming less familialist. The main aim of this introductory article is to demonstrate the theoretical advantages based on the new cross-regional comparison. This article proceeds in three steps. First, it establishes the usefulness of the concept of family resemblances in our cross-regional comparison. Second, it presents a brief historical account of recent policy differences across the four countries going beyond familialism and shows that the existing theories fail to account for the new divergences. Third, it provides the overview of the Special Issue by explaining the research puzzles each paper tackles. We argue that these four welfare states, which are moving beyond familialism to varying degrees, represent heuristically helpful cases to explore the effects of both domestic and international political factors.

Political actors, public opinion and the extension of welfare coverage

In a post-industrial world in which employment is increasingly ‘non-standard’, the tying of benefit access to standard employment history in insurance-style programmes has created considerable insider–outsider welfare state divisions. This article investigates the factors shaping attempts to address this issue through the extension of benefit coverage. Comparing the introduction of minimum income schemes in France and Italy, it explores the explanatory power of various partisanship- and institution-based accounts. The article argues that Italian inaction was the result not of partisanship-based factors, but rather of contrasting levels of public pressure. The divergent public opinion was, in turn, shaped by institutional characteristics typically associated with Southern European welfare states. Survey and multi-level model analyses provide support for the claim that the centrality of the family and limited administrative capacity have had an impact on concern for the unemployed.

Leave policies in Southern Europe: continuities and changes

This contribution addresses the challenge of reviewing Southern European welfare states by analysing how developments in leave policies are generating common or divergent trends across Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. These societies offer a mixture of family patterns and family policies. Over the last decade they have developed significant work–family arrangements both in terms of parental leave and early education childcare services. The four countries have been moving in the direction of longer paid leave and the promotion of paternal leave, allowing for family diversity and new gender-equality incentives. Besides these common trends, the four countries also reveal differences enabling them to shift towards alternative leave models, such as the one-year gender-equality-oriented model or the choice-oriented leave model. However, for the time being, taking into account take-up rates and the impact of the economic crisis, the four countries conform to what we have characterised as an ‘extensible early return to work’ leave model. Leave policies are reviewed in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain mainly between 2004 and 2014, drawing on data from the Annual Reviews of the Leave Policies and Research Network, Eurostat and the OECD Family Database.

Intergenerational private transfers: Portugal in the European context.

Intergenerational private transfers should be made important as a common occurrence in familialistic societies when establishing the identity of Southern European welfare state regimes. They function as a safety net and as a way of reinforcing the bonds amongst elements in a family. Although Portugal is undoubtedly a Southern European country, it is frequently ignored in comparative studies, and is assumed to share the characteristics of Spain and Italy. But do these countries really belong to a common, distinctive model? Portugal was included in the fourth wave of the survey of health, ageing and retirement in Europe, which provides a large sample for the study of intergenerational private transfers in this country. It also enables comparison with what happens elsewhere in Europe. We examine the upward and downward flows between generations and identify several important determinants of each type of transfers. Additionally, we show that the different types and directions of transfers are positively correlated, pointing to a self-reinforcement of transfer behaviour in families. We find that Portugal has an especially low probability of private transfers of time and money. After taking into consideration the household-level characteristics, none of the countries included in this study has a significantly lower probability of occurrence of any type of transfer than that of Portugal. A Southern European specific pattern of family transfers is only partially confirmed, yet Portugal and Spain do share the same model.

The Distributional Impact of Austerity and the Recession in Southern Europe

Southern European welfare states are under stress. On the one hand, the recession has been causing unemployment to rise and incomes to fall. On the other hand, austerity has affected the capacity of welfare states to protect those affected. This paper assesses the distributional implications of the crisis in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal from 2009 to 2013. Using a microsimulation model, we disentangle the first-order effects of tax–benefit policies from the broader effects of the crisis, and estimate how its burden has been shared across income groups. We conclude by discussing the methodological pitfalls and policy implications of our research.

Child Poverty: What Can Social Spending Explain in Europe?

This study assesses the role of social spending in relation to child poverty in European welfare states. Using macro-level panel data from EU SILC 2005-2012, we analyze the effect of the size of social spending and the effect of how those benefits are targeted. We separately estimate the effect of pension benefits on child poverty, as the prevalence of multigenerational families makes them a relevant income source for families with children, especially in Southern and Eastern European welfare states. Estimating a GLS model including time and country fixed effects, we find that both cash transfers and pensions substantially reduce child poverty. Increased targeting also leads to lower poverty rates, but the effect sizes are more modest by comparison, and strongly depend on how targeting is defined. The estimates for social spending change little across various model specifications and we also obtain similar estimates when we use regional variation within countries to assess the same effects. Where social spending explains a large share of variation in poverty within countries over time, the explanatory power with respect to cross-sectional variation in poverty rates is limited. The complete model does explain a large share of cross-sectional disparities in poverty across European welfare states, but a sizable unexplained variation remains. This unexplained disparity likely relates to factors that are more invariable over time.

Alike but not alike: Welfare state and unemployment policies in Southern Europe. Italy and Portugal compared

Although Italy and Portugal are considered to be part of the same welfare state family – the Southern European one – analysis of a key component of the welfare state, namely, unemployment policies and regulations, reveals a different evaluation. A comparative analysis of a series of specific indicators of Italian and Portuguese unemployment regimes shows that they represent two different models. Portugal appears to be a more inclusive system, closer to continental or Northern European countries than it is to Italy, or at least representing a hybrid system that combines characteristics of continental European welfare states with characteristics that are more typical of Southern European welfare states. Italy, on the contrary, is much more clearly a Southern European welfare state.

Italy and Spain: Still the Case of Familistic Welfare Models?

Italy and Spain are often labeled by the literature on comparative welfare as "familistic" welfare systems. Although it is not possible to find a unified criteria which defines and specifies what is meant by "familism" as a feature of a given welfare state model, generally speaking the term refers to the key role that the family plays in the overarching architecture of the welfare system, acting as the main provider of care and welfare for children and dependent individuals. This article will reflect on these questions by critically revising the framing of Southern European welfare states as "familistic" in the comparative welfare and care regimes literature. We will then look at trends of female labour force participation in Italy and Spain over the last two decades (1990-2010) in terms of the intensity of women's participation in the labour market and their prevailing pattern of participation for both countries. We will look at activity, employment and unemployment according to age, education level, civil status and number of children; and patterns of participation by looking at permanency in employment and type of contract (part-time/full-time and fixed-term). The idea here is to analyse the extent to which Italy and Spain have (or have not) made the transition from a 'male breadwinner model' (where women remain outside paid employment) towards a more diversified pattern of family formation with regards the labour market participation of women. The purpose will also be that of stressing divergences between these two countries in their evolution of their female labour force that may question their assumed similarities.

Elderly bias, new social risks and social spending: change and timing in eight programmes across four worlds of welfare, 1980-2003

Over the past decades, all affluent welfare states have been coping with two major new trends: population ageing and new social risks resulting from de-industrialization. How have these demand-side trends, and their timing, affected welfare spending? We investigate up to 21 OECD democracies with respect to eight separate programmes and two composite indicators of aggregate welfare spending bias towards the elderly and new social risks. We find that welfare regime logics still matter crucially in accounting for variation between countries, as does the timing of the large-scale arrival of new social risks. Both Southern European welfare states and countries that entered the post-industrial society comparatively late spend less on programmes such as education and family allowances, and more on survivor pensions. However within countries, contemporaneous levels of new social risks conspicuously fail to affect spending on programmes that deal with these risks. These findings defy simple neo-pluralist expectations of social policy responsiveness: on their own, even dramatic demand-side trends influence welfare spending relatively little in advanced democracies.

Social Assistance Policies and Decentralization in the Countries of Southern Europe

The focus of this article is on those policy areas – social assistance for the poor, family transfers and social care services – which in most comparative analyses are indicated as the weakest components of the Mediterranean safety net. Trends in these policy areas are analysed within the framework of the division of responsibility and labour between welfare state, family solidarity, and role of the third sector and of the market. Southern European welfare states have been described as at the same time “rudimentary” and highly “familialised”, with charities and third sector agencies more or less idiosyncratically “filling the holes” both of welfare state and of family solidarity. Until the nineties, all of them lacked a last resource safety net, but in the case of specific categories. During the nineties, these countries have partly restructured the composition and logic of their safety nets. On the one hand, the welfare mix has been more systematically regulated. On the other hand, anti-poverty policies entered the policy discourse and agenda, although only Portugal has succeeded in introducing a minimum income provision at the state level. The ensuing developments strengthened both commonalities and differences among these countries. Dependence on family solidarity and heavy reliance on third sector actors remain a common feature. But countries differ in the impact of territorial differentiation in “welfare mixes”, which, particularly in Spain and Italy, is increasingly rooted in the institutional set up of the state.

Leaving home: a comparative analysis of ECHP data

We use three waves of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to analyse the impact of employment, earnings, household income, and welfare on young adults' decision to leave the parental home. In particular we investigate the importance of these income sources in different welfare settings. We use a simultaneous equation approach to control for unobserved heterogeneity and left censoring. We find employment and income to be very important factors in the decisions of young adults to leave home in the Southern European welfare state. For the Continental European welfare states the results are more mixed. Employment and income are still important factors, but the effects are less clear and there are significant variations. In the Social Democratic welfare states, the effect of employment and income appears negligible. The effect is also modest in the UK (the Liberal Market state), a finding we attribute to the educational system.

Testing the 'social dumping' hypothesis in Southern Europe: welfare policies in Greece and Spain during the last 20 years

Recent research has shown that the traditional view of social welfare in Southern Europe as 'rudimentary' is a misreading of its distinct nature: welfare arrangements in the region do not 'lag behind' as a whole, rather they suffer from serious imbalances that cause inequities and inefficiencies. The article focuses on Greece and Spain, two countries that differ in terms of economic performance and size, but share a recent history of successful transition to democracy and common membership of the Southern European 'model' of welfare. The article shows that the welfare policies pursued in these two countries over the last 20 years were marked by strong expansionary trends that clearly outbalanced occasional cut-backs. This evidence lends no support to the 'social dumping' hypothesis. If anything, 'catching up with Europe' in terms of social as well as economic standards seems to have been elevated to something of a national ideal, shared by both government and opposition. As the expansionary thrust of 'welfare state building' is being exhausted, the biggest challenge facing Southern European welfare states is the construction of welfare institutions in tune with a changing society.