Welfare Arrangements Research Articles

Does Healthcare Moderate the Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Selfrated Health?

Background: Empirical evidence is growing for the fact that societal conditions are major causes of differences in health across individuals and societies. A positive correlation between socioeconomic status and health outcomes is documented in countries with various welfare arrangements, level of social trust, and health policies. We investigated how the health gradient was affected by healthcare intervention. Methods: Self-reported data on health status after exposure to healthcare intervention was collected by means of a postal survey (2009) to all members of the Norwegian Breast Cancer Association. Response rate was 62 percent. 1666 women aged 40-69 was included in the analysis. In order to create a counterfactual framework, we used propensity score analysis to match each observation in the treatment sample with an observation in a non-treatment sample. The observations were classified into high and low socioeconomic status groups based on information on education and labor market affiliation. Results and conclusion: A social gradient in self-rated health was found. Experience of breast cancer and treatment was shown to have a moderating effect on the gradient. While high-status women on average reported a 0.63 points reduction in health after breast cancer treatment, the corresponding reduction for low status women was 0.32 points. These results lend some support to the hypothesis that individuals from lower status groups may benefit from healthcare more than others due to effects of information and support.

Youth, family change and welfare arrangements

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the main characteristics and welfare rationale of the Mediterranean typology. Familism, female employment and care are singled out as three representative areas which provide data on the dynamics of continuity and change in the Southern European countries under examination. Particular attention is paid to the increasing female participation in the labour market and the gradual disappearance of the so-called Mediterranean ‘superwomen’. The process of female labour activation is already having a great impact in all activities concerned with the type of care traditionally carried out within Mediterranean households. Final remarks stress the need to pay attention in future research to ongoing societal changes which are bound to have knock-on consequences for Southern European welfare as we have known it until now.

The Southern European Welfare model in the post-industrial order

ABSTRACTThe discussion on the existence of a distinctive ‘Mediterranean’ welfare model has focused on the historical and politico-institutional dynamics, as well as on the policy traits of the welfare arrangements found in Southern European countries. Particular attention has been given to the external pressures and internal constraints faced by the welfare systems of these countries, as well as to what extent there is a common response to such challenges. In this article, we claim that while researchers were embarked in this scholarly effort, Southern European societies kept changing, transforming the nature of existing arrangements in not always forecasted directions, to the point of questioning the adequacy of clustering them under a common type. The current context of economic and financial crisis introduces additional factors in the process of transformation and reform of the welfare schemes of these countries, placed at the epicentre of the turmoil shattering European economies and societies.

Evaluating Cross-National Variations in Under-Declared Wages in the European Union: an Exploratory Study

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that some employers illegitimately under-declare employees' salaries by paying an undeclared ('envelope') wage in addition to their official declared salary. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically the competing perspectives that variously explain the cross-national variations in the propensity of employ- ers to under-declare wages to be: simply a legacy of under-development (modernisation perspective); due to high taxes, state corruption and burdensome regulations and controls (neo-liberal perspective), or a result of inadequate state intervention in work and welfare arrangements which leaves workers less than fully protected (structuralist perspective). Reporting the re- sults of a 2007 Eurobarometer involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews across the 27 member states of the European Union (EU-27) to evaluate the prevalence, size and nature of envelope wage arrangements across the EU-27, this exploratory study reveals that envelope wages are more common, larger and more likely to be for regular work in poorer, more corrupt and less equal nations with lower levels of taxation, state intervention in the labor market, social protection and redistribution via so- cial transfers. The paper concludes by discussing both the theoretical and policy implications.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE NEWS

Journal of Policy Analysis and ManagementVolume 32, Issue 4 p. 905-909 International Conference News INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE NEWS ASIAN SOCIAL PROTECTION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Karen J. Baehler, Karen J. BaehlerSearch for more papers by this authorDouglas J. Besharov, Douglas J. BesharovSearch for more papers by this author Karen J. Baehler, Karen J. BaehlerSearch for more papers by this authorDouglas J. Besharov, Douglas J. BesharovSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 August 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21722Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume32, Issue4Autumn 2013Pages 905-909 RelatedInformation

Pervasive community care platform: Ambient Intelligence leveraging sensor networks and mobile agents

Several powerful trends are contributing to an aging of much of the world's population, especially in economically developed countries. To mitigate the negative effects of rapidly ageing populations, societies must act early to plan for the welfare, medical care and residential arrangements of their senior citizens, and for the manpower and associated training needed to execute these plans. This paper describes the development of an Ambient Intelligent Community Care Platform (AICCP), which creates an environment of Ambient Intelligence through the use of sensor network and mobile agent (MA) technologies. The AICCP allows caregivers to quickly and accurately locate their charges; access, update and share critical treatment and wellness data; and automatically archive all records. The AICCP presented in this paper is expected to enable caregivers and communities to offer pervasive, accurate and context-aware care services.

Everyday challenges for mothers with Spinal Cord Injury: a qualitative study

The aim of this study was to explore how women with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) manage their daily lives after becoming mothers and if they experienced barriers in society. Five women were interviewed, aged 25–40 years, who had incurred a traumatic SCI two to twenty years previous to their first child being born. All the participants expressed a wish to carry out infant care tasks and to take part in their children's activities. The participants used welfare arrangements to manage certain tasks. They faced challenges in the form of physical barriers in their surroundings, as well as various degrees of struggle related to social services. Statements from five Norwegian women with SCI point to unique practical and emotional experiences of becoming mothers. Their reports also elucidate the lack of knowledge among professionals related to motherhood and SCI.

Personal assistance: what happens to the arrangement when the number of users increases and new user groups are included?

Using data from two representative surveys among the users of personal assistance in Norway carried out in 2002 and 2010, this paper examines developments and consequences of a strong increase of users and an extension of the target group. Users with mobility impairments still dominate, but the proportion of people with intellectual impairments, brain injuries, and sensory impairments have increased. The ‘new' users seem to be allocated fewer hours compared with those who received personal assistance at the early stages of the arrangement. Still, most users experience an increase in their welfare arrangements, as compared with the situation before they received personal assistance. The user control of the arrangement seems to be preserved, but it takes more different forms. For a higher proportion of users, one of their relatives or a guardian acts as a manager of the assistance.

Intergenerational redistribution and risk sharing with changing longevity

Trend increases in longevity are a global phenomenon challenging the fiscal sustainability of current welfare arrangements. Policy proposals abound and often build on implicit assertions concerning intergenerational equity. This paper offers a simple but manageable OLG model with endogenous retirement and cohort-specific longevity to address intergenerational redistribution and risk sharing. While it is well known that a utilitarian planner strives for consumption smoothing, it is shown that healthy ageing calls for work smoothing in the sense that retirement ages increase with longevity. Hence, cohorts with higher longevity should contribute to their larger consumption needs via later retirement, although it is shown that the planner still front-loads some financing (pre-saving). Stochastic longevity raises the issue of intergenerational risk sharing, which implies that cohorts turning out to have a high longevity are compensated at the expense of cohorts turning out to have a relatively short longevity.

Dual decentralization in China's transitional economy: Welfare regionalism and policy implications for central–local relationship

In the last three decades, China has experienced dual decentralization in transforming its economy, resulting in decentralization and deconcentration in public administration and social service delivery. Under the policy framework of decentralization, particularly when welfare financing has been decentralized to local governments, the emergence of welfare regionalism is evident in China. This paper sets out against this policy context to examine how three local governments in eastern coastal areas in China handle changing labour welfare needs by institutionalizing social and labour protection measures to meet the local needs instead of implementing central policy. With particular reference to examine why regional variations exist in welfare provision even though the socio-economic development status is similar in these areas, this paper shows how different forms of capitals, government's governance style and diversity of industries have affected welfare arrangements for labour in China.

The Impact of Macro-Economic Circumstances and Social Protection Expenditure on Economic Deprivation in 25 European Countries, 2007–2011

In this study, we investigate to what extent macro-economic circumstances and social protection expenditure affect economic deprivation. We use three items from round five of the European Social Survey (2010–2011) to construct our latent outcome variable, which we label economic deprivation in the 3 years before 2010–2011. The results of our linear multilevel regression analyses indicate that in countries that perform worse economically, individual experiences of economic deprivation are more prevalent: the stronger the rise in the unemployment rate and the lower a country’s wealth, the more economic deprivation individuals experience. We also find that in countries with high levels of social protection, people experience less economic deprivation as compared to countries with low levels of social protection. In turn, adverse economic conditions in a country temper these positive outcomes of social welfare arrangements. Finally, our study reveals that the strength of the relationship between a low income and economic deprivation strongly varies according to the economic circumstances in a country and the generosity of the welfare state.

Women, Migration, and Care: Explorations of Diversity and Dynamism in the Global South

The conceptualization and models of migration, gendered labor, and care have been developed with the primacy of South to North migrations in mind and have only incorporated Southern countries’ experiences selectively. Using the examples of selected countries in the South, especially middle-income countries, this article aims to unsettle some of the assumptions that underlie this analysis and to lay out some questions that might need to be addressed to make questions of care reflect the diversity and dynamic of migratory systems, gender regimes, and welfare arrangements in the South. In particular, the middle-income countries, such as Argentina and South Africa, pose interesting questions as they are tied into global circuits of care in distinctive ways and have different kinds of care provisioning and histories of gendered migrations.

FAMILY SOLIDARITY AND INFORMAL CARE: THE CASE OF CARE FOR PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA

According to Bayertz the core meaning of solidarity is the perception of mutual obligations between the members of a community. This definition leaves open the various ways solidarity is perceived by individuals in different communities and how it manifests itself in a particular community. This paper explores solidarity as manifested in the context of families in respect of caregiving for a family member who has become dependent because of disease or illness. Though family caregiving is based on the same perception of mutual obligation as the solidarity that supports welfare arrangements in society, the manifestation of solidarity in families is different. Solidarity that underpins welfare arrangements is based on a perception of mutual obligation towards an anonymous dependent other and is enforced by the government. Solidarity in families is directed towards a concrete other and is based on free choice, albeit often accompanied by a strong sense of personal duty. In this paper we try to distinguish between solidarity as a sociological concept and as a moral concept. An important moral element of solidarity, as expressed in families, is the need for recognition of family caregivers, not only of their concrete practical efforts, but also of their own identity as caregivers and as individuals. We illustrate this argument by referring to examples in the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report Dementia: ethical issues, about the experiences of family caregivers in dementia care and the importance for them of recognition of their role.

The persistence of health inequalities in modern welfare states: The explanation of a paradox

The persistence of socioeconomic inequalities in health, even in the highly developed ‘welfare states’ of Western Europe, is one of the great disappointments of public health. Health inequalities have not only persisted while welfare states were being built up, but on some measures have even widened, and are not smaller in European countries with more generous welfare arrangements. This paper attempts to identify potential explanations for this paradox, by reviewing nine modern ‘theories’ of the explanation of health inequalities. The theories reviewed are: mathematical artifact, fundamental causes, life course perspective, social selection, personal characteristics, neo-materialism, psychosocial factors, diffusion of innovations, and cultural capital.Based on these theories it is hypothesized that three circumstances may help to explain the persistence of health inequalities despite attenuation of inequalities in material conditions by the welfare state: (1) inequalities in access to material and immaterial resources have not been eliminated by the welfare state, and are still substantial; (2) due to greater intergenerational mobility, the composition of lower socioeconomic groups has become more homogeneous with regard to personal characteristics associated with ill-health; and (3) due to a change in epidemiological regime, in which consumption behavior became the most important determinant of ill-health, the marginal benefits of the immaterial resources to which a higher social position gives access have increased.Further research is necessary to test these hypotheses. If they are correct, the persistence of health inequalities in modern European welfare states can partly be seen as a failure of these welfare states to implement more radical redistribution measures, and partly as a form of ‘bad luck’ related to concurrent developments that have changed the composition of socioeconomic groups and made health inequalities more sensitive to immaterial factors. It is argued that normative evaluations of health inequalities should take these explanations into account, and that a direct attack on the personal, psychosocial and cultural determinants of health inequalities may be necessary to achieve a substantial reduction of health inequalities.

Fair Conditions and Fair Consequences? Exploring New Labour, Welfare Contractualism and Social Attitudes

This article explores the intention and effects of New Labour's ‘conditional’ welfare-to-work strategy. Conditionality has been the subject of substantive debate, with New Labour distinguishing its own contractualist welfare reforms from alternative strategies, often associated with ‘punitive’ US workfare. This article assesses whether New Labour's attempt to fashion what is described as ‘reciprocal responsibility’ in welfare arrangements avoided the commonly cited by-products of workfare. To achieve this, evidence is presented from the British Social Attitudes series, which shows a profound hardening of attitudes towards the unemployed. In light of these findings, the evidence supports arguments about the adverse effects that welfare contractualism can have for wider social relations.

Owner-occupation, Mortgages and Intergenerational Transfers: The Extreme Cases of Hungary and the Netherlands

ABSTRACT Societies are trying to cope with ageing and the consequences of the global financial crisis. In most societies collective welfare arrangements for the elderly are under pressure, and drawing on housing equity can be considered as a potential source of augmenting one's pension and financing one's care in old age. This article explores the way in which housing equity is perceived as a financial back-up for old age in Hungary and the Netherlands: two completely different contexts. Hungary and the Netherlands are at opposite poles in many respects when it comes to old age and the role of owner-occupation. In Hungary the large majority of the population is owner-occupier, in the Netherlands the proportion is much smaller. In Hungary most home owners are outright owners; in the Netherlands they invariably have a mortgage. These differences appear to impact on household strategies. In Hungary housing equity plays a key role in the financial strategies of families, whereas it plays only a minor role in the Netherlands. Moving to the rental sector to release housing equity appears an obvious strategy in the Netherlands, whereas this strategy is non-existent in Hungary.

Japan's New Inequality: Intersection of Employment Reforms and Welfare Arrangements

Japan's New Inequality: Intersection of Employment Reforms and Welfare Arrangements

INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL PROTECTION AT THE LOCAL LEVEL: UNDERMINING OR REINFORCING SOCIAL POLICY?

Inequality is an interdisciplinary issue shaped at supranational, national and regional or local level. Public policies in tackling inequality are regulated under pressures produced by global conjuncture and the way that these are affecting national welfare arrangements. Local authorities increasingly implement social protection interventions across Europe, as local distributors of state's policies. In Greece, in the field of local government have taken place major reforms the last three decades. Responsibilities of local authorities have widened, especially in the field of social protection, based mainly on EU's Structural Funds. In the current conjuncture of fiscal austerity and deregulation of the -weak anyway- welfare state in general social policy seems to be squashed in between the supra national factor on one side and subnational on the other.

Ambiguous citizenship: ‘Postmodern’ versus ‘modern’ welfare at the margins

This article discusses the classic welfare state problem of balancing universal values with an attention to particular individuals and needs. Welfare for marginalized citizens is addressed as a particular urgent case in point. The article first considers Baumann as emblematic for a postmodern position on welfare. In contrast, Luhmann's systems theory is then presented to form a program of observation of concrete welfare services, using the ‘rigour’ of the latter to bound the ‘liquidity’ of the first. Instead of suspecting modern institutions tout cout, the article analyses in detail the discursive ordering practices of welfare services for marginalized citizens, i.e. the homeless. On this basis, it contrasts what we term a ‘modern’ versus a ‘postmodern’ perspective upon organized welfare. Some limits to a postmodern position are indicated, in particular with respect to the ideal of including ‘the whole person’ in modern welfare arrangements.

The institutional embeddedness of social responsibility: a multilevel analysis of smaller firms' civic engagement in Western Europe

This study sets out to explore the institutional embeddedness of civic engagement in the form of monetary donations and volunteering by firms in Western Europe. Drawing on a recent analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), two contradictory hypotheses—institutional mirror versus substitute—are discussed focusing on three institutional spheres: corporatism, welfare arrangements and statism. The paper argues for moving beyond a linear perspective and takes the interaction of institutional spheres into account. Using a comparative quantitative multilevel approach, institutional, sectoral and organizational determinants of enterprises' civic engagement are empirically analysed drawing on a survey of small- and medium-sized firms in 17 Western European countries. While firm size remains an important determinant of civic engagement, it is shown that the impact of welfare arrangements is conditional on the presence of corporatist arrangements and vice versa. This suggests that civic engagement both mirrors and substitutes for existing institutions, depending on underlying institutional complementarities.