Welfare State Generosity Research Articles

Disciplinary welfare and the punitive turn in criminal justice: Parallel trends or communicating vessels?

When it comes to the relationship between social policy and penal policy, existing scholarship often focuses on the penal–welfare tradeoff, according to which countries with large and generous welfare states tend to have lower incarceration rates and less harsh treatment of offenders. We know much less about the relationship between the punitive turn in criminal justice and the use of discipline within social policy. Has there been a parallel trend of law-and-order policies and stricter benefit conditionality, a kind of ‘criminalization’ of welfare beneficiaries, as critical scholarship suggests? We test this idea for the first time with quantitative data, using public spending on public order and safety and unemployment benefit conditionality data for 18 rich democracies between 1990 and 2012, that is, the period when a punitive turn as well as the rise of activation and workfare is said to have taken place. Contrary to the critical literature, we do not find evidence of parallel trends toward more discipline in both areas, but rather a negative relationship of ‘communicating vessels’, where a greater use of disciplinary tools in social policy is associated with stagnating or even shrinking spending on police and prisons. Moreover, this pattern tends to emerge under conditions of higher welfare state generosity. These findings have important implications about the role of state ‘discipline’ in contemporary policymaking.

Fiscal Impoverishment in Rich Democracies

Abstract This article introduces fiscal impoverishment as a framework for comparative poverty research. We invert standard analyses of welfare state policy and household poverty by focusing not on poverty alleviation but poverty creation and exacerbation. Using harmonized household survey data, we show how the income and payroll taxes most rich countries rely on to finance the public sector serve to push households (further) into poverty. We estimate that across rich democracies on average about one in four households in poverty are made poorer on net after taxes and transfers; with fiscal impoverishment levels ranging from <10% in some countries to more than 70% in others, revealing extreme cross-national variation in how the pocketbooks of poor households are impacted by national tax and transfer policy. We go on to show that fiscal impoverishment does not track with standard measures of welfare state generosity but is instead largely determined by design of income tax systems, particularly a country’s relative reliance on (regressive) payroll taxes versus (progressive) income taxes. We consider the implications of fiscal impoverishment for assessing welfare state performance and for comparative poverty research.

Differences in access to social capital across societies

Abstract This paper explores country-level macro-structural conditions that are associated with social capital, measured as individuals’ access to social resources. To explain differences in social capital across societies, we formulate hypotheses based on welfare state generosity, cultural orientations (collectivism vs. individualism), and income inequality. We test our hypotheses using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2017, which comprises a total sample size of 50,010 individuals living in 33 countries. We use the position generator survey instrument to build two composite measures of social capital: the diversity and the socio-economic status of social contacts. Multilevel regression models reveal that diversity of social contacts is generally greater among individuals in countries with generous welfare states, while access to contacts of a higher socio-economic status is generally better among individuals in countries with higher levels of individualism. A country’s income inequality is not associated with the social capital of its citizens. However, the association between a person’s socioeconomic status and the diversity of their social capital is moderated by income inequality. As such, our study serves to demonstrate that macro-social conditions at the country level do influence individual social capital and have different implications depending on the dimension considered.

The welfare state and support for environmental action in Europe

How do welfare state policies affect the political support for environmental action of economically vulnerable social groups? Two competing hypotheses can be delineated. On the one hand, a synergy logic would imply that welfare state generosity is associated with higher support for environmental action among economically vulnerable groups due to the insecurity reducing effects of the welfare state. On the other hand, a crowding-out logic would suggest that welfare state generosity is associated with lower support for other policy priorities like environmental action. We test these two hypotheses using 2019 Eurobarometer survey data and country-level indicators of welfare state generosity in 22 European countries. We find that the working class and the elderly are particularly opposed to individual and national environmental action and that the welfare state plays a complex moderating role. Consistent with a synergy logic, welfare state generosity increases pro-environmental behaviour among the working class, but its association with more positive attitudes towards national environmental policies is less strong. Consistent with a crowding-out logic, the elderly appear less likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways if retirement benefits are high. To explore the mechanisms behind this association, we show that the working class who struggle to pay their bills are most opposed to environmental action. Overall, economic insecurities are key obstacles for support of environmental actions and the effects of the welfare state depend both on which social group is concerned and whether individual behaviour versus policy preferences are considered.

Fifty years of welfare state generosity

AbstractThis article describes an overview of key findings from the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Project (CWEP). CWEP compiles major features of the generosity of unemployment, sickness and public pension programs over the last several decades in 21 countries. Describing and extending earlier work to measure the institutional variation in major social insurance programs over time, we provide previously unpublished methodological details of widely used measures of program generosity; measures which have appeared in over 200 analyses during the last decade and a half. We find a high level of variation in wage replacement and benefit conditionality across programs in most countries; calling into question the notion of an historically stable configurations of characteristics, at least during the last 45 years. For instance, our research shows that several prototypical social democratic welfare states experienced the highest declines in generosity in the last three decades. Furthermore, we also show that, as late as the mid‐1970s, some ‘social democratic’ welfare states still trailed some ‘conservative’ welfare states, including prototypical ones like Germany.

Economy or culture? How the relative salience of policy dimensions shapes partisan effects on welfare state generosity

Abstract Whether parties matter for welfare policy is debated in comparative research. This article argues that one reason for dwindling partisan effects is that with the rising salience of cultural issues, political conflict has become increasingly two-dimensional. The argument expects parties to be more prone to shape welfare policy in ways expected by partisan theory if the salience of the economic policy dimension vis-à-vis the cultural dimension increases. To assess the relative salience of the dimensions, the article relies on parties’ emphases on economic issues compared to cultural issues from election manifestos. In a quantitative analysis of welfare benefits in 16 European countries between 1970 and 2011, partisan effects are shown to depend on the relative salience of the economic dimension in party competition: with increasing dominance of economic issues, the positive effect of left parties on welfare state generosity increases while partisan effects dissipate after elections dominated by cultural issues.

Incorporating pro-family and pro-female components into empirical welfare state classification: some new evidence for European countries

In this paper, we attempt to incorporate an innovative and more comprehensive view of defamilization into the comparative analysis of real-type welfare state models. The study presents four empirically distinguished welfare state regimes where we consider separately both notions associated with (de)familization and (de)genderization together with other dimensions characterizing different welfare state models. In a multivariate statistical analysis framework, we examine 25 European countries using data covering the period between 2014 and 2017. Our findings suggest that whereas Southern European countries represent various welfare state models, most of the analyzed Central and Eastern European countries form a separate group. Similarly, the Nordic countries, except Iceland, belong to the same cluster. However, CEE countries and Nordic countries represent extremely divergent models in terms of the degree of degenderization, but similar in terms of family policy, the public–private mix, as well as welfare state generosity. The data also show that the extensive welfare state coexists with the state’s predominance in delivering welfare provisions. Moreover, we demonstrate that neither the general size of the welfare state or its public–private mix nor a pro-family policy differentiate the socio-economic situation of women across countries studied.

How Credit Markets Substitute for Welfare States and Influence Social Policy Preferences: Evidence from US States

AbstractWhat is the relationship between debt and the welfare state? Recent arguments suggest that credit markets fill gaps left by limited social benefits but often rest on thin empirical grounds. This article makes two contributions to this debate by using micro-level panel data and leveraging variation in welfare state generosity across US states and over time. First, it shows that households that experience unemployment borrow significantly more in states where unemployment benefits are low compared to states where benefits are high. A 10-percentage-point decrease in unemployment replacement rates increases debt levels by about 30 per cent, or $5,300. Secondly, the article documents that rising indebtedness in the context of weak social policies has political consequences and increases support for a stronger safety net. One explanation is that voters seek social protection against downstream debt-induced economic risks. These findings suggest that welfare states can play a critical role in mitigating growing indebtedness.

Public attitudes towards a European minimum income benefit: How (perceived) welfare state performance and expectations shape popular support

The economic crisis and the unequal degree to which it has affected European Union (EU) member states have fuelled the debate on whether the EU should take responsibility for the living standards of European citizens. The current article contributes to this debate by investigating for the first time public support for an EU-wide minimum income benefit scheme. Through an analysis of data from the European Social Survey 2016, our results reveal that diverging national experiences and expectations are crucial in understanding why Europeans are widely divided on the implementation of such a benefit scheme. The analysis shows that (1) welfare state generosity and perceived welfare state performance dampen support, (2) those expecting that ‘more Europe’ will increase social protection levels are much more supportive, (3) the stronger support for a European minimum income benefit in less generous welfare states is explained by more optimistic expectations about the EU’s domestic impact and (4) lower socioeconomic status groups are more supportive of this policy proposal. These findings can be interpreted in terms of sociotropic and egocentric self-interests, and illustrate how (perceived) performance of the national welfare state and expectations about the EU’s impact on social protection levels shape support for supranational social policymaking.

Partisan influence on social and labor market policies in the Silver Age of welfare state retrenchment: evidences from 19 OECD countries

Are governing parties able to shape social and labor market policies according to their ideological positions or are they overwhelmed by socio-economic and institutional constraints? The paper answers this crucial question by developing a comparative study on 19 OECD countries from 1985 to 2011. It investigates whether the location of governments on a continuous left–right scale affects four measures of welfare state generosity: namely, public spending in social policies, in active and passive labor market policies and the level of unemployment insurance replacement rate. The results obtained through an error correction model show that governing parties are unable to affect social and labor market policies in the short-run, when economic dynamics prevail. However, in the long-run, partisanship gains relevance: when the government coalition moves to the right, there is a negative impact on all the measures of welfare state generosity.

Embedding technological transformation: the welfare state and citizen attitudes toward technology

AbstractMuch scholarly attention has been given to the potentially disruptive distributional implications of new technologies in labor markets. Less explored is the way citizens as socially embedded individuals perceive and respond to technological transformation. This study fills this gap by exploring how welfare state institutions shape and are shaped by citizens’ perceptions of technological transformation. My analysis covering over 50 developed and developing countries finds that welfare state generosity is associated with a greater acceptance of technological change. I also provide evidence consistent with the expectation that labor market interventions of the welfare state have the potential to reduce the skill cleavage over technological transformation by mitigating the insecurity faced by the low-skilled. Additionally, citizens embracing technological transformation are more supportive of the welfare state than techno-skeptics are.

Going upstream – an umbrella review of the macroeconomic determinants of health and health inequalities

BackgroundThe social determinants of health have been widely recognised yet there remains a lack of clarity regarding what constitute the macro-economic determinants of health and what can be done to address them. An umbrella review of systematic reviews was conducted to identify the evidence for the health and health inequalities impact of population level macroeconomic factors, strategies, policies and interventions.MethodsNine databases were searched for systematic reviews meeting the Database of s of Reviews of Effects (DARE) criteria using a novel conceptual framework. Studies were assessed for quality using a standardised instrument and a narrative overview of the findings is presented.ResultsThe review found a large (n = 62) but low quality systematic review-level evidence base. The results indicated that action to promote employment and improve working conditions can help improve health and reduce gender-based health inequalities. Evidence suggests that market regulation of tobacco, alcohol and food is likely to be effective at improving health and reducing inequalities in health including strong taxation, or restriction of advertising and availability. Privatisation of utilities and alcohol sectors, income inequality, and economic crises are likely to increase health inequalities. Left of centre governments and welfare state generosity may have a positive health impact, but evidence on specific welfare interventions is mixed. Trade and trade policies were found to have a mixed effect. There were no systematic reviews of the health impact of monetary policy or of large economic institutions such as central banks and regulatory organisations.ConclusionsThe results of this study provide a simple yet comprehensive framework to support policy-makers and practitioners in addressing the macroeconomic determinants of health. Further research is needed in low and middle income countries and further reviews are needed to summarise evidence in key gaps identified by this review.Trial registrationProtocol for umbrella review prospectively registered with PROSPERO CRD42017068357.

To what extent do welfare states compensate for the cost of children? The joint impact of taxes, benefits and public goods and services

In order to alleviate child poverty, contemporary European welfare states have shifted their focus increasingly towards child-centred investment strategies. However, studies examining the generosity of welfare states to families with children focus mainly on cash benefit packages, or on government expenditure, while not taking into account the actual out-of-pocket costs families have to make to fulfil their needs. This article aims at contributing to existing studies by: (1) empirically assessing the needs and costs of children across welfare states by making use of cross-nationally comparable reference budgets, while taking into account publicly provided or subsidised services; (2) simulating the cash benefits and taxes that affect households with children through the tax–benefit system, by making use of the new Hypothetical Household Tool (HHoT) in EUROMOD; and (3) combining both types of information in order to compare the essential out-of-pocket costs for children between 6 and 18 years old with the simulated cash benefit packages. We propose a new indicator that can be used to assess welfare state generosity to families with children: the child cost compensation indicator. The use of the indicator is empirically illustrated by comparing six European welfare states: Belgium, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Spain. The article shows that, even though with important cross-national variation, cash transfers generally amount to less than 60 percent of the cost of children. Although in five out of six countries support for families is higher at the lower end of the income distribution, for households living on a low gross wage, the income of a family with children is less adequate compared to a similar childless family and is in many cases insufficient to participate adequately in society.

The decline of Western European social democracy: Exploring the transformed link between welfare state generosity and the electoral strength of social democratic parties, 1975–2014

Social democratic parties are crumbling at the polls. Surprisingly, however, the causes of this demise remain largely unexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap in the research by studying the long-term impact of welfare state generosity on the vote share of social democratic parties in 16 Western European democracies. If the welfare state indeed was a key factor behind social democratic growth in the past, we ask whether the recent plight of these parties is down to a reversal of their previously dominant success factor? The article makes three principal findings. First, we show that social democratic parties primarily benefited electorally from expansive reforms at lower levels of welfare state generosity. Second, we find that this dynamic of diminishing returns also helps explain the demise of the social democratic party family in the whole of Western Europe. Lastly, our results reveal that programmatic turns to the right predict electoral losses in the least generous welfare states, whereas such shifts either pass unnoticed or predict vote gains in the most generous ones. We conclude by arguing that the structure of welfare state institutions is one important explanation for variations in the demise of the once powerful social democratic party family.

The limits of skill-selective immigration policies: Welfare states and the commodification of labour immigrants

Why do some countries have more skill-selective labour immigration policies than others? Despite general agreement that high-skilled immigrants are economically and socially desirable, some countries extensively select high-skilled from low-skilled labour immigrants, while others do not. While most political economy accounts indicate an explicit connection between relative skill selectivity and welfare states, two different hypotheses emerge regarding the direction of this relationship. The fiscal cost hypothesis puts forward that the tension between welfare state generosity and immigration motivates greater selectivity as states try to reconcile fiscal pressures for closure with continuing needs for immigration. The decommodification hypothesis, in contrast, holds that the capabilities of generous welfare states to decommodify their citizens also decrease rationales to be more skill-selective towards labour immigrants. Developing an original measure of skill selectivity in labour immigration policies for 20 developed democracies from 2000 to 2010, we test these two hypotheses. Our results indicate that differences in decommodification levels appear to be substantively and negatively associated with differences in skill selectivity levels, while changes in welfare spending over time, particularly among high-spending countries, rather than differences in spending levels, seem to be positively associated with increasing skill selectivity. This suggests potential tensions between the political responses to economic and demographic changes in the form of immigration policy adjustments and the underlying social logic of modern welfare states. The findings contribute not only to the study of high-skilled immigration, but also advance the current research on the tension between immigration and the welfare state.

Migration Incorporation Regimes and Institutionalized Forms of Solidarity: Between Unconditional Institutional Solidarity and Welfare Chauvinism

Despite compelling literature, research has so far failed to provide substantive empirical evidence on the relationship between individual preferences on the inclusion of immigrants into institutionalized forms of solidarity and migration incorporation regimes. I argue that, apart from individual factors and welfare state generosity, citizenship models shape citizen’s attitudes on immigrant social rights. Concretely, I examine the effect of the civic and cultural dimensions of the models of citizenship relative to attitudes of unconditional institutional solidarity toward immigrants and welfare chauvinism. The results show that individual attitudes about welfare eligibility of migrants differ among sociodemographic characteristics, political economic orientations, and social depositions of deservingness but at the same time yield from the cultural barriers to the access of immigrants to the political community.

How much evidence is there that political factors are related to population health outcomes? An internationally comparative systematic review

ObjectivesTo provide a 7-year update of the most recent systematic review about the relationships between political features and population health outcomes.SettingInternationally comparative scholarly literature.Data sourcesTen scholarly bibliographic databases plus supplementary...

Social expenditure, social rights, and benefit receipt as indicators of welfare state generosity

PurposeRevitalising the debate about how to operationalise and measure the extent of welfare states – the so-called dependent variable problem – recent research claims a close theoretical interaction between three different indicators: aggregated data on social expenditure, social rights and social benefit receipt. It is suggested that they all serve as an approximation of welfare state generosity as a dependent variable and help understand variation between as well as change of welfare states. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how these three indicators statistically relate to each other, using data on unemployment cash benefits.Design/methodology/approachTo this end, a time series cross-sectional analysis is carried out, covering 16 European countries for the period 2003–2011.FindingsResults confirm theoretical reflections on the link between the different indicators, whereby higher levels of social expenditure are positively associated with more generous social rights as well as higher levels of benefit receipt. Additionally, the study points to an ambivalent relation between benefit access and benefit levels within indicators as well as across them. This suggests competing policy choices in European welfare states, whereby more generous benefit access implies lower benefit levels and vice versa.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the existing dependent variable literature in a twofold way. First, the conceptual link between the three different indicators and the assumptions they are associated with are critically reviewed. Second, by providing a statistical analysis of the relation between the different indicators across 16 countries, the study goes beyond theoretical elaborations about their association as well as existing small-N or medium-N case time trend studies.

Numbers and Attitudes towards Welfare State Generosity

Between pro-retrenchment politicians and segments of the media, exaggerated claims about the generous benefits enjoyed by those on welfare are relatively common. But to what extent, and under what conditions, can they actually shape attitudes towards welfare? This study explores these questions via a survey experiment conducted in the UK, examining: (1) the extent to which the value of the claimed figure matters; (2) if the presence of anchoring information about minimum wage income has an impact; and (3) whether these effects differ based on egalitarianism and political knowledge. Results suggest that increasing the size of the claimed figure decreases support in a broadly linear fashion, with anchoring information important only when (asserted) benefit levels are modestly above the minimum wage income. Egalitarianism, in turn, primarily matters when especially low figures are placed alongside information about minimum wage, while low-knowledge respondents were more susceptible to anchoring effects than high-knowledge ones.

Income Inequality, Globalization, and the Welfare State: Evidence from 23 Industrial Countries, 1990–2009

The debate regarding the welfare state–weakening effect and the income inequality‐increasing effect of globalization remains a contentious issue among stratification scholars. For some, globalization increases income inequality, while for others, globalization has no, or a negligible, effect on income inequality. This study brings new evidence to bear on this debate by separately investigating effects of multiple indicators of globalization (international trade, foreign direct investment [FDI] and immigration), and of welfare state generosity (government social‐protection spending) on (1) income inequality before taxes and transfers and (2) income inequality after taxes and transfers, using data from 23 Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries over 1990–2009. First, results show a positive effect of international trade, a negative effect of immigration, but no effect of FDI and government social‐protection spending on income inequality before taxes and transfers. Second, results show no effect of the globalization indicators but a negative effect of government social‐protection spending on income inequality after taxes and transfers. These findings suggest that (1) globalization has inequality‐increasing effects depending on measures of income inequality; (2) the welfare state, in many OECD countries, continues to shape income distribution; and (3) in contrast with the popular narrative, immigration may decrease income inequality.