Welfare Mix Research Articles

Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals Asset-based Welfare and Housing in Great Britain

The role of housing in providing a welfare asset has been widely explored. With the growth in home ownership between 1979 and 2008 and erosion of the welfare state, housing wealth has become part of the welfare mix in the UK. Here, we present analysis of housing outcomes, as measured in the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), among people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual in Great Britain. This shows that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people have poorer housing outcomes than heterosexual counterparts: they are less likely to be homeowners; more likely to be private renters; and more likely to be social renters. With growing intergenerational inequalities in access to home ownership, we argue that, as openly LGB (and broader trans and queer) people being on average younger than the rest of the population, this could lead to LGB people, as a group, being excluded from asset-based welfare in the future as they age.

Social Housing with Community Support in Québec: A Sociopolitical Perspective

The 2022 adoption of a new policy framework on community support in social housing in Québec speaks to a convergence of a multitude of community, government, and municipal actors around this practice. This qualitative study delves into the process by which this approach was institutionalized to demonstrate how community support became a central norm of the social housing field in the province. Drawing from literature on the welfare mix, we situate this phenomenon in the broader context of the transformation of the welfare state, in which nonprofit organizations played an increasing role in providing social housing to vulnerable populations (e.g., people at risk of homelessness). This article demonstrates how power dynamics and negotiations between the state and the third sector were, in this case, a major source of institutional change over time.

The Cross-Regional Impact of Taiwan’s Same-Sex Marriage Legalisation: The Queer Economy of Welfare Mix

This article builds a bridge between research on the queer economy and that on the mixed economy of welfare by developing the ‘queer economy of welfare mix’ framework. While the two fields are related, there is a lack of discussion about the queer dimensions of the mixed economy of welfare or the mixed strategies employed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals to explore the benefits and limitations of the queer economy. The purpose of our framework is to show how local and transnational goods provided by the mixed economy of welfare can enable LGBTQ+ individuals to organise their welfare through the mixed strategies – citizen strategy, consumer strategy, and consumer-citizen strategy. By examining Taiwan’s legalised same-sex marriage and its impact on Hong Kong and Mainland China, we demonstrate the empirical significance of the framework, which serves as an analytical tool for examining the government’s role in promoting LGBTQ+ individuals’ welfare and the challenges involved.

Parental social disadvantage as a determinant of welfare reliance among young adults before and after the Great Recession

ABSTRACT We investigate the association between parental social disadvantage and later welfare reliance among their children during entry to adulthood. We ask whether this association changed after the onset of the Great Recession. We use Finnish register-based data, studying young adults aged 18–22 in the years 2003–2012. Parental disadvantage is measured as low education, low income, unemployment and social assistance receipt when the children were at the age of 14 to 15. Welfare reliance is measured as income coming mainly from unemployment benefits, housing allowances and social assistance. We analyse annual welfare-reliance states by repeated-measures logit models. All parental disadvantage indicators predict higher probability of welfare reliance, and accumulation of several types of disadvantage has stronger effects than any single indicator. The effects of parental disadvantage became stronger by the onset of the recession in 2008, indicating that young adults coming from disadvantaged families were affected more by the recession. The findings illustrate the importance of state support in the welfare mix among young people with a disadvantaged background during recessions in a Nordic welfare state.

Abolishing the Act on System of Choice in Swedish eldercare: on arguments and replacements in the municipalities

PurposeSince 2009 Swedish municipalities may apply the Act on System of Choice (LOV) in, among other things, eldercare. About half of the 290 Swedish municipalities have chosen this within home-care services for older citizens, thus creating conditions for a welfare mix where private and public providers compete. Some of these municipalities later made decisions to abolish LOV. This article aims to analyse the arguments put forward by municipal politicians to abolish LOV and discusses if the case of abandoning LOV represents a case of re-municipalization.Design/methodology/approachQualitative method was used to analyse decision protocols and media materials from 20 Swedish municipalities that had abolished LOV in home-care services.FindingsThe article shows that politics and ideology seem to have only a limited significance in abolishing LOV. The most important arguments found in the empirical materials were instead pragmatic and related to the transaction costs: in smaller municipalities about the weak position of private providers and in larger municipalities about reported cases of welfare crime and extensive needs to control and review. In smaller municipalities, LOV was replaced by public monopoly and in larger municipalities by other types of procurements.Originality/valueWith its focus on eldercare in party-dominated municipalities, the article adds knowledge to the literature on drivers of re-municipalization but also discusses possible delimitations of the concept of re-municipalization.

Philanthropic donor agencies and social policy in sub-Saharan Africa – New perspectives to the “welfare mix”

AbstractThe role of external actors has now been widely acknowledged in shaping social policy processes in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, the social policy roles and influence of philanthropic donors have been less recognised and examined. As various countries in the region seek to expand social policy implementation and delivery and revitalise the development of national welfare systems, it is important to better understand the roles and functions of philanthropic donor agencies in the processes of agenda-setting, financing, and delivery of social policy. This article discusses the complex social policy functions held by philanthropic donor agencies in sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of the “welfare mix,” drawing attention to the divergencies and convergences between Western philanthropic donors and their African counterparts, while reflecting on the direction of future research agendas.

The Entrepreneurial Welfare Mix: The Case of Community-Based Old Age Services in China

Abstract Developing an old-age service system that can meet the fast-growing needs of the aging population is challenging. It is increasingly recognised that community-level services should be pivotal in providing services to older people. In this article, the authors use the Chinese experience and argue that because the state is not clear how such a system should look like, all actors behave like entrepreneurs who strategise, take risks and search for a viable “business model”. The research draws upon in-depth interviews and focus groups in six cities in China collected in 2015-2016 and follow-up interviews in one community in three cities in 2021. The findings show that the service system has evolved into a dynamic entrepreneurial welfare mix that actively embraces the market. This research contributes to the theoretical development of the welfare mix. The authors also raised possible issues with such a direction of change in the conclusion.

Social policy expansion and segmentation in the first two decades of the 21st century in Latin America

AbstractLatin American countries saw an important expansion in social policy in the first two decades of the 21st century. Along with this increased inclusion, however, social policy remains segmented. Using recent data from ECLAC, World Bank, and other sources, this paper offers a comprehensive analysis of trends in social policy for the period 2000–2020 for 17 countries in Latin America. Four areas of social policy are assessed in longitudinal and comparative perspectives: transfers, health care, education, and family policies. Conditional cash transfers (CCT) and noncontributory pensions (NCP) are the two main policy innovations that allowed countries in the region to expand social rights to previously excluded populations (outsiders). At the same time, due to their design, these policies have introduced new layers of fragmentation to the welfare mix, without resolving—or even increasing—segmentation in social policy. Segmentation is still the rule for the areas of health care and education, and increasing privatisation went unabated even in the periods of social policy expansion and in the countries governed by left coalitions.

Patterns and lived realities: Exploring informal social protection across race and education

AbstractInformal social protection (ISP) has been recognised as a source of livelihood support for the poor and a critical element of the welfare mix in the global South. While the potential of ISP in contributing to economic welfare is well‐documented, less is known about its role in responding to and maintaining horizontal inequalities. Group‐based inequality is a key concern of transformative social protection, particularly discriminatory practices and exclusion that shape them. By using a mixed‐method approach to social networks, and including non‐poor and poor individuals, I provide insights into how support practices differ across race and education in urban Namibia thereby reflecting continued economic inequalities. I argue that ISP plays an important role in understanding transformative approaches to social protection; both by highlighting the importance of exploring ISP beyond a conceptual lens on poverty as well as its potential in maintaining power imbalances in a stratified, unequal society.

English ‘iron rod’ welfare versus Italian ‘colander’ welfare: understanding the intra-European mobility strategies of unaccompanied young migrants and refugees

The experiences of unaccompanied young migrants and refugees challenge the idea of a common European asylum policy but also show that traditional welfare typologies used to account for differences in welfare across states fail to account for the lived experiences of this group. They do not consider the shifting categorizations of young migrants in institutional terms, nor how the stratification of their social rights plays out over place and time. Moreover, current welfare typologies give inadequate attention to the increasing intersection of the labour market and opportunities for regularization, the relative importance and role of the state in the welfare mix, and the nexus of access to welfare and immigration enforcement. This article draws on qualitative longitudinal research in England and Italy to argue that rather than experiencing welfare through the lens of Liberal (England) versus Conservative or Mediterranean (Italy) regimes, unaccompanied young migrants and refugees in these countries are better understood as navigating different systems of ‘iron rod welfare’ and ‘colander welfare’. In England, the nexus between welfare and legal status is policed by an iron rod on one side of which exists a plethora of social rights, but on the other the risk of a proactive detention and deportation regime. In Italy, meanwhile, the holes of the colander denote gaps in protection but also possibilities to navigate alternative welfare strategies independently of the state. The ability to act independently of the state is an important but under-theorized capability for this population, for whom the state is a more ambiguous actor than is traditionally considered in European social policy.

Examining Family Living Arrangements, Economic Development, Education Expenditure and Children’s Weight from the Welfare Mix in China

There is increased social concern regarding children’s weight in China, but there is a relative lack of research concerning its social determinants. Based on 1,656 school-age children’s samples in mainland China from the Chinese Nutrition and Health Database (CHNS 2011), we analyzed the impact of multiple factors on children’s weight using a welfare mix framework that integrated factors including family living arrangements, economic development, and educational spending. School-age children’s weight was measured using body mass index (BMI). The independent variables were factors developed based on the social determinants of health perspective in conjunction with a welfare mix framework. These variables included family living arrangements to reflect the family welfare factor, average government educational expenditure per student to reflect the state welfare factor, and GDP per capita to reflect the market welfare factor. Multiple regression models were used to analyze the influences of each factor on children’s weight. The results showed that the factors were significant, with different directions of influence on weight. The results also showed that the factors considered in the welfare mix framework sometimes serve as risk factors rather than solely protective factors within the Chinese context. According to this study, a reasonable geographical distribution of health service resources and child-oriented health policies are needed to promote children’s well-being.

Social innovation as a policy response to restructure the welfare state

The focus of this paper is the interaction between social innovation and restructuring welfare state. Modern welfare states have been reconfiguring their welfare mixes through social innovation. This includes a productive integration of formal and informal actors with support and leading role of the state. This collaboration becomes significantly important since it means the integration of not only the actors, but also their capabilities and resources in today’s world where new social risks and new social challenges have emerged and no actor can overcome these by its own. Therefore, social innovation is a useful tool in the new role sharing within the welfare mix in order to reach higher levels of satisfaction and success in welfare provision. The main point here is that this is not a zero-sum competition; gaining more power of the actors other than the state – the market, civil society organisations and the family – does not necessarily mean that the state lost its leading role and power. This is rather a new type of cooperation among actors and their capabilities as well as their resources in welfare provision. In this sense, social innovation may contribute well to the debates over the financial crisis of the welfare state since it may lead to the more wisely use of existing resources of welfare actors. Thanks to social innovative programs, not only the NGOs, but also market forces as well as citizens are more active to access welfare provisions and social protection in the broadest sense. Thus, social innovative strategies are definitely a solid step taken towards “enabling” or “active” welfare state.

Third sector and the coronavirus pandemic: towards a new welfare mix

Third sector and the coronavirus pandemic: towards a new welfare mix

Social Innovation in social care services: actors and roles in the innovation process

ABSTRACT Social Innovation (SI) is receiving considerable attention in the social care field, but much about how SI occurs in this sector is unexplored, especially concerning which actors are involved and in what roles. Thus, this study aimed to contextualize and expand on the current literature on SI, welfare mix, and service innovation by analysing 13 cases of SI experiences in social care in Lombardy, Italy. Findings show that the range of involved actors is wider than expected regarding variety and different roles they play. Namely, the Changemaker and Mastermind-Coordinator roles were crucial in the rise of local-level SI experiences.

Public, private or hybrid? Providing care services under austerity: the case of Italy

PurposeThe paper examines the different trajectories of externalisation and the development of different kinds of welfare mix in three different sub-sectors of socio-educational services: long-term care for the elderly, early childhood services and kindergartens. By integrating the industrial relations and comparative public administration literatures, it analyses the different rationales underpinning contracting-out decisions of Italian local governments.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts a multi-method, multi-level approach: quantitative data on the provision of socio-educational services and the nature of the providers are combined with the analysis of 12 case studies of municipalities through 80 semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis.FindingsThe paper argues that differentials in labour regulation across the public/private divide and the consequent possibility to access labour markets characterised by cheaper labour and higher organisational flexibility are a key explanation in local governments' decisions to outsource. Despite labour market factors playing a prominent role, their relevance is significantly tempered by political and social factors and particularly by the strong opposition of citizens, personnel and trade unions to pure market solutions in the provision of such services. However, the centrality of these factors depends on the nature of the services: political sensibility against privatisation proved to be stronger in kindergartens, while services for the elderly were more frequently and less contentiously privatised.Originality/valueThe main contribution is the integration of the two research traditions to analyse patterns of outsourcing in the socio-educational services in Italy, showing that neither of them is able, alone, to explain the different private/public mix characterising different social and educational services.

Historical Evolution of the Welfare Mix in Colonial Korea

Abstract This paper aims to understand the welfare mix in Korea by examining its historical origins and tracing its evolution during Japanese colonial rule. After locating the origins of the welfare mix in the early Chosŏn Dynasty, this study examines the evolution of the welfare mix in Korea under Japanese colonial rule. By focusing on repressiveness and recognition, the dual aspects of Japanese colonial rule, we reveal a traditional aspect of the Korean welfare mix that remained strong and was, paradoxically, reinforced under Japanese colonial rule. Following the establishment of a colonial centralised state, Japanese attempts to impose modern dispensational welfare systems proved inadequate. The Japanese were forced to return to traditional, informal welfare providers, such as kyes, to satisfy Chosŏn’s need for welfare. The paper concludes by arguing that this welfare mix can help to explain the welfare regime in modern Korea.

Non-for-Profits and EU Citizens’ Cross-Border Social Rights in Different Welfare States

AbstractThis paper looks at rights in practice to understand how migrant EU citizens’ formal social rights translate into substantive ones. It highlights a factor thus far overlooked in the literature on welfare states and migrants’ social rights: namely, the actors involved in welfare delivery. The argument is based, first, on non-profit organisations’ (NPOs) function as ‘rights intermediaries’; and second, on the distinct make-up of the ‘welfare mix’ across countries, with which NPO’s role in the provision of services, and hence their capacities and autonomy, varies. Focusing on EU citizens’ cross-border social rights, and drawing on in-depth research in Germany and Sweden, the paper reveals how NPOs defend and facilitate access to rights in both countries. Yet NPOs’ extensive role in the German welfare sector generates greater capacities for NPOs to pursue inclusive objectives than what is available to their Swedish counterparts, which occupy a much more limited position as welfare providers. This, it is argued, can be important for understanding how boundaries of social citizenship are drawn in each country.

Middle-Income Groups in Kenya. Conflicting Realities Between Upward Mobility and Uncertainty

For more than a decade scholars mostly from economy and development studies have described the rise of a newly emerging ‘middle class’ in the Global South including Africa. This has led to a ‘middle class narrative’ with the ‘middle class’ as the backbone of economic and democratic development. Especially with regard to the stability of the position of the people in the ‘middle’, empirical social science studies challenge the ‘middle class narrative’ and at their uncertainty and insecurity. This tension between upward mobility at the one hand uncertainty and instability at the other hand (the vulnerability-security nexus) and the options to cope with this challenge under the condition of limited provision of formal social security is the focus of this case study on Kenya. Instead of an analysis of inequality based on income, it is more helpful to start from the welfare mix and the role of social networks as main elements of provision of social security. Against this background, we identify different strategies of coping that go together with different sets of values and lifestyles, conceptualised as milieus, that are not determined by the socio-economic situation.

The Less-Known History of the Voluntary Sector in an East Asian Welfare Regime: A South Korean Case

AbstractAlthough the voluntary sector is internationally valued as an integral component of the welfare mix, studies on East Asian welfare regimes have primarily focused on state-market-family interactions, paying scant attention to the long-standing and pivotal role of voluntary agencies in their construction. This case study illuminates this less-known aspect of modern welfare history in the context of South Korea, with a particular focus on the activities of voluntary organizations. The study categorizes South Korean voluntary associations into four types and examines their different contributions in shaping South Korea’s welfare regime, by applying Young’s framework on government–voluntary organizations relations. This historical exploration on the South Korean voluntary sector aims to deepen understanding of an East Asian welfare state regime. It further suggests that current welfare mix debates, focusing on the service delivery role of voluntary organizations within Western European welfare states, should be broadened.

Regimes, Social Risks and the Welfare Mix: Unpacking Attitudes to Pensions and Childcare in Germany and the UK Through Deliberative Forums

AbstractModern welfare regimes rest on a range of actors – state, market, family/households, employers and charities – but austerity programmes diminish the contribution of the state. While changes in this ‘welfare mix’ require support from the population, attitude studies have focused mainly on people’s views on state responsibilities, using welfare regime theory to explain differences. This paper contributes to our understanding of the welfare mix by including other providers such as the market, the family or employers, and also introduces social risk theories, contrasting new and old risks. Regime theory implies differences will persist over time, but risk theory suggests that growing similarities in certain risks may tend to promote international convergence. This article examines attitudes to the roles of state, market, family, charity/community and employer for pension and childcare in Germany and the UK. We collected data using deliberative forums, a new method in social policy research that allows citizens space to pursue extended lightly moderated discussion and permits researchers to analyse people’s justifications for their attitudes. Our research indicated patterns of convergence especially in preferences for childcare, but that regime predominates in people’s justifications for their attitudes: regime differences in attitudes are resilient.