Welfare State 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.

In Absentia—Can a Lack of Behaviour Be a Useful Welfare Indicator? An Application to the Captive Management of Livingstone’s Fruit Bats, Pteropus livingstonii

Non-invasive behavioural indicators of welfare can be particularly useful for managing captive breeding populations of endangered species; these allow individual welfare to be monitored and reproductive success maximised without the need for capture and restraint methods. However, most studies focus on the behaviours whose presence or frequency can predict welfare issues; the absence of a behaviour is less frequently considered an indicator of welfare. Here, we investigate potential behavioural correlates with welfare-related health states in captive Livingstone’s fruit bats (Pteropus livingstonii), a critically endangered species that can become obese due to restricted space and reduced activity rates compared with wild populations. In this study, behavioural data were collected on males (which are particularly prone to obesity). Hurdle models were used to separately determine the factors predicting the presence or absence of behaviour and the frequency of observed behaviours. Whilst significantly lower levels of vigilance were observed in males with a larger body mass, those with diagnosed health issues were significantly more likely to show an absence of locomotion and foraging behaviour. Males with a lower body mass were also more likely to show an absence of foraging behaviour. Our study demonstrates how the absence of a behaviour can be informative as to an individual’s welfare state. This study has identified behavioural profiles that can be used to flag at-risk individuals, reducing the need for potentially stressful handling and improving our ability to safeguard the welfare of individuals within a large captive group.

Informalizing childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic: Policy responses to childcare and their implications for working parents in Denmark, England and Germany

The closure of extra-familial childcare facilities by European governments in 2020 was an important part of interventions against the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. One consequence was that childcare was provided by parents at home, mainly by women. As a result, women mainly experienced financial and employment risks related to this “informalization” of childcare. The childcare policies of European welfare states differ in the extent to which they include measures to reduce the social risks related to informalization. Against this backdrop, this paper asks: How should one understand cross-national differences in childcare policies during the pandemic? We are also particularly interested in the effects of childcare policies on the social risks connected with the informalization of childcare and what these mean for the gendered division of paid work and care. Differences in childcare policies during the pandemic are commonly explained in terms of the path dependence of such policies. Using the theoretical approach of “care arrangement,” this article introduces a broader theoretical framework that considers the role of cultural and institutional factors for understanding the cross-national differences in childcare policies during the pandemic. We introduce the findings of a comparative empirical study of childcare policies in three European welfare states—Denmark, Germany and England—that represent different types of care arrangements. This paper uses policy and media documents, quantitative data on childcare and women’s employment, cultural ideas and secondary analysis of empirical studies. We find that governments did not per se respond to the pandemic based on institutional path dependence regarding childcare policies, while the integration of culture into the theoretical framework allows for a more comprehensive understanding.

Editorial introduction to special issue: Public policies in the Nordic welfare states. Challenges and responses

Editorial introduction to special issue: Public policies in the Nordic welfare states. Challenges and responses

Addressing social disparities in special education placement in three welfare states: Student demographic correlates of the share of students identified with special educational needs at the school level using TALIS data

AbstractThe number of students with special educational needs (SEN) is growing rapidly. This study compared the correlations between the share of students identified with SEN and student diversity (socioeconomic status and ethnicity) at the school level in three countries. We used the principal questionnaire from the 2018 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) to examine data from principals in three welfare states (the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden) and whether minority students in these three countries also receive special education. We conducted an ordinal regression analysis to examine the data. First, our results suggest that the share of immigrants in schools does not reliably predict the share of students placed in SEN. Second, the schools' share of refugees predicts the share of students placed in SEN, although the results vary by educational stage and country. Third, the schools' share of socioeconomically disadvantaged students predicts the share of students with SEN in all countries. We conclude that our study both agrees and disagrees with overrepresentation theory and equity theory. Finally, we suggest that welfare state theory may explain these differences.

Социальное государство как фактор снижения противоречий в правящей элите на примере России конца XIX – начала XX вв.

The article deals with the formation of the foundations of the social state in Russia at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. At the same time, the emphasis is placed on the fact that representatives of political elite, differing in various ideological views and ideas about the ideal form of government, could agree on the need to expand social functions of the state. The aim of the article is to determine the influence of ideas about the need to build a social state in Russia and certain elements of this idea implemented in life on reducing contradictions in the ranks of the ruling elite. The most significant sources are the documentation of political parties in Russia, which were formed at the beginning of the XX century and took part in the work of the State Duma. These sources allow us to see that, despite sometimes significant differences in issues concerning the form of government, the state structure and political freedoms, most parties were inclined to recognize the need for the development of a social state in Russia. This was manifested in the introduction of relevant items in the party programs devoted to the working issue, development of the state insurance system, as well as the introduction of free education. The results of the study show that in Russia, as in most European countries, there was a gradual understanding of the need to build a social state. At the same time, consensus on this issue could help reduce the level of contradictions in the ruling elite. However, some discrepancies in specific programs of political parties regarding the elements of the welfare state could act as reasons for conflicts.

The absorbent digital welfare state: Silencing dissent, steering progress

This paper explores the intricate dynamics of digital welfare within the context of late-capitalist welfare states, focusing on the advanced digitalisation initiatives of Denmark. It offers a critical analysis of the concept of ‘digital welfare’ – defined as the integration of digital technologies into the frameworks of social protection. Central to the research is how the Danish welfare state, recognised for its e-government leadership, engages with and incorporates critiques to sustain its approach to digital transformation. Utilising Boltanski's theories on the absorption of capitalist critique and Mathiesen's ‘silently silencing’ concept, the study examines the state's proficiency in assimilating criticism. The findings reveal the persistent flexibility of late-capitalist governance systems, especially in how digital welfare policies are leveraged to reconnect citizens with state mechanisms while simultaneously mitigating dissent. The research highlights the necessity for ongoing investigation into the implications of digitalisation for welfare institutions and societal structures at large.

From the ‘culture wars’ to reparative histories

The ‘culture wars’ that dominate public discourse in the UK turn, very often, on the significance accorded to histories of empire, slavery, and colonialism. What seems to be primarily of concern is the place of such histories in the telling of our national story. In this section, the articles explore different ways in which we could think about the relationship of the past with the present. Specifically, the articles collected here use the frame of ‘reparative histories’ as a potentially more effective way of engaging with complex and contested pasts. They address the idea of a reparatory sociology, colonial photography, representation and indigenous spaces, the gendering of reparative histories, and the need to rethink the welfare state from such a perspective.

Ett demokratiskt och brottsförebyggande arbete

An effort for democracy and crime prevention - A study about a municipality’s initiatives aimed at schools in vulnerable areas. The overall purpose of this article is to investigate the role community schools are given to meet what is framed as problems in areas with social challenges. The empirical material has been collected through semi-structured interviews with ten employees. The theoretical framework is inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s metaphor about the state’s and the public’s right and left hands as two competing forces within the welfare state. The analysis has generated two main constructions of goals in the employees’ talk about the goals of the community schools. Namely, for the community schools to function both as arenas for democracy and as arenas for crime prevention. This leads to a contradiction between efforts to open the school to meet these problems and efforts to shield the school environment from them.

Inequality of the crowding-out effect of tobacco expenditure in Colombia.

In recent decades, policy initiatives involving increases in the tobacco tax have increased pressure on budget allocations in poor households. In this study, we examine this issue in the context of the expansion of the social welfare state that has taken place over the last two decades in several emerging economies. This study explores the case of Colombia between 1997 and 2011. In this period, the budget share of the poorest expenditure quintile devoted to tobacco products of smokers' households doubled. We analyse the differences between the poorest and richest quintiles concerning the changes in budget shares, fixing a reference population over time to avoid demographic composition confounders. We find no evidence of crowding-out of education or healthcare expenditures. This is likely to be the result of free universal access to health insurance and basic education for the poor. For higher-income households, tobacco crowds out expenditures on entertainment, leisure activities, and luxury expenditures. This finding should reassure policymakers who are keen to impose tobacco taxes as an element of their public health policy.

Re-interpreting basic values underlying social security law in times of climate change and ecological crisis

Shaping solidarity, guaranteeing basic subsistence, maintaining income and employment activation can be seen as basic values underlying social security law in many European welfare states. This article argues that the meaning of these values or concepts is determined by legitimating discourses within which they are interpreted. While so far Rawls's theory of justice and related egalitarian liberal philosophies have had a great impact on these discourses, the ecological crisis has given rise to new discourses which are inspired by neo-republican theory and green republicanism. Instead of legitimising a capitalist economy based on economic growth, these discourses promote a post-productive society that seeks to realise human flourishing and meaningful lives. The aim of this article is to contribute to the emerging debate on social security reform by explaining how neo-republican theory and green republicanism can fill social security law's basic values or concepts with meaning that is more in line with current ecological concerns. In contrast to previous contributions that have sought to rethink labour and social security law (‘social law’) in a way that is more compatible with our ecological and climate crisis, this article builds on Poststructuralist Discourse Theory to develop its argument.

Education, employment, and care work over adulthood: gendered life course trajectories in Canada and Germany

ABSTRACT This article compares the education, employment, and care work biographical sequences of Canadian and German women and men from late adolescence into mid-adulthood. Through the lenses of comparative gendered life course theory and welfare regime theory, sequence and cluster analyses are used to determine the adult life course sequences of women and men in each country and to assess the extent to which they differ across contexts. The analyses reveal clear gender differences in work–family balance in labour market participation and unpaid care work. Groups also differ strongly on educational attainment, income, and family composition. Comparatively, gender differences are less marked in the Canadian context. These results suggest that differing gendered trajectories result in diverse outcomes depending on the national context, shaping different outcomes for women cross-nationally. Our findings highlight how historical and contemporary country-specific welfare state policies support or hinder women as active and productive members of society.

Rediscovering the Developmentalist-Productive Roots of Welfare State Policies

Persistent calls for social investment-oriented social policy suggest that existing social policies are unsustainable and need radical rethinking. Instead, this paper argues that we need to better understand how long-standing policies have enabled society’s adaptation to socioeconomic changes and forestalled experiences of marginalization, poverty, and acute vulnerability. Inspired by the historical success of Nordic-style social policies, I reconsider the relation between development studies and welfare state studies, synthesize ideas from both, elaborate on the inclusive strand of welfare developmentalism, and introduce a conceptual framework for explaining why existing social policies may be simultaneously protective and productive. Applying social developmentalist ideas from the Global South to the traditional welfare state literature of the Global North, this paper advances a theoretical explanation for why what I term “developmental welfare state policies” defy standard economic assumptions through preventive investments that inhere in existing policy variants. It cautions against promoting separate social investment policies or characterizing policies as exclusively passive or activating.

Does the (socio-political) socialization context matter for paternal involvement?

Previous literature on paternal involvement emphasizes the influence of fathers’ socialization contexts, considering either welfare policies (Hipp and Leuze, 2015) or experiences with their own fathers (Brown et al., 2018; Parke, 1995). In this study, we combine those two branches of research and examine how fathers’ and their fathers’ (grandfathers’) socialization experiences (parental leave regulations in their early adulthood as an example of (de-)familization policies (Lohmann and Zagel, 2016)) predict paternal involvement today. To measure paternal involvement, we create an indicator for involvement that covers Lamb et al. (1985) three aspects of direct interaction, responsibility, and availability and the fact that a father has taken paternal leave for at least one of his children or not. We use the fact that a substantial proportion of the fathers in the German, national survey AID:A 2019 (Kuger et al., 2020) were socialized in another welfare state regime (6.3% of fathers have a direct and another 13.5% have an indirect migration background (their fathers were born in another country) covering birth cohorts from the 1970s to the 1990s; total N = 1053). We then add context-related information on their (fathers’ and grandfathers’) countries of origin from the OECD family database and estimate an SEM model to test potential direct and indirect effects. We find that more educated fathers who experienced extended parental leave regulations are more involved fathers today. Our results support, thus, that welfare state conditions influence individuals’ behaviour while education is a relevant moderator in this relationship.

The positive relationship between female employment and fertility rates: The role of family benefits expenditure and gender-role ideologies

This article interrogates the impacts of different types of family benefits expenditures on the positive relationship between female employment and fertility rates in developed welfare states. It does this by theorizing how these family benefits align with welfare state regimes’ preferences for different normative gender-role ideologies. Rather than treating family benefits as a monolith, this article investigates the impact of disaggregated expenditures in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) family policy database (1. services and in-kind benefits, 2. child-related cash benefits and 3. tax-based financial support for children) on both female employment and fertility rates. This is done using pooled time-series analysis covering the period 2000–9. The analysis yields evidence that expenditure most reflecting a ‘full egalitarian’ gender ideology including service and in-kind benefit provision has the most positive association with female employment and fertility due to an emphasis on defamiliarization. The picture for child-related cash benefits is mixed due to the presence of cash transfer provisions not employment-contingent captured in the indicator. In contrast, tax-based financial support for children harms female employment, reflecting a maternalistic ‘traditional’ ideological orientation, but is positive for fertility rates indicating a moderate pro-natal effect of tax-based financial support for children.

Attitudes and professional values of veterinarians and veterinary students toward positive welfare states for dairy cattle

Research that involves agricultural animal welfare has typically aimed to improve welfare by decreasing disease, distress, and pain. Positive welfare does not necessarily occur with the absence of suffering but in combination with opportunities for behaviors or affective states desired by animals. Our objectives were to describe Canadian bovine veterinarians' and veterinary students' attitudes, professional normative values, and perceived ability to promote positive welfare for dairy cows, and to explore participants' provided rationale. With an online cross-sectional survey, Canadian veterinary practitioners (n = 78) and veterinary students (n = 148) were asked, on a 7-point Likert scale, about their attitudes, perceived professional normative values, and perceived ability of veterinarians to promote positive welfare for dairy cows. We used an applied thematic analysis approach within the qualitative description methodology to analyze participants' open-ended text responses. Quantitatively, participants had very favorable attitudes (mean ± SE; 6.3 ± 0.04) and perceived favorable values (5.7 ± 0.06) in the veterinary community toward positive welfare opportunities for dairy cows. Three themes were identified to explain the professional normative values: influences from within the veterinary profession, influences from outside the veterinary profession, and personal views of participants. Participants were confident that veterinarians could suggest positive welfare opportunities for dairy cows (6.1 ± 0.06) but were uncertain that the decision to suggest these opportunities to producers was within a veterinarian's control (4.3 ± 0.11) and were not confident that implementation of positive welfare opportunities was under a veterinarian's control (2.1 ± 0.07). Three themes were identified to explain the barriers to veterinarians promoting positive welfare opportunities for dairy cows: not practical to implement, resistance to change, and concern for the animal. Participants stated that many positive welfare opportunities were impractical or expensive to implement. We conclude that positive attitudes and positive professional values exist in the veterinary community toward positive welfare for dairy cows but that much uncertainty exists regarding a veterinarian's ability to influence change to current practices.

Perceiving welfare state sustainability: fiscal costs, group deservingness, or ideology?

Abstract What shapes citizens’ perceptions of long-term welfare state sustainability? Past work hints at three explanations: information about fiscal pressure, deservingness views of recipient groups, and left-right ideology. We consider all three in an experiment exposing people to information about fiscal costs and/or low deservingness in the labor market domain. Left-right ideology functions as a moderator. Unlike past work, which has concentrated on demographic pressures, information about fiscal costs does not generate worries about sustainability (separately or combined with deservingness cues). Rather, left-right ideology moderates reactions. People on the left seem to question and counterargue against fiscal pressure, such that when facing negative information, they develop more positive sustainability views. This counter-reaction coexists with statistically insignificant effects in the negative direction among people on the right. These ideological contingencies arise without partisan cues, suggesting that welfare state pressure itself is ideologically controversial in the labor market domain.

Medicalization of Old Age: Experiencing Healthism and Overdiagnosis in a Nordic Welfare State.

In Denmark, people are expected to take responsibility for their health, not least as their bodies age and they experience signs of physical or mental decline. Drawing on fieldwork among older Danes, I illustrate that an excessive focus on health gives rise to social and structural controversies and disparities, linking ideas of healthy behavior at the individual level with the societal framing of disease and aging. I argue that this emphasis contributes to the unwarranted diagnosis of bodily variations that naturally occur in the aging process, a phenomenon referred to as overdiagnosis, adding to a broader medicalization of old age.

Defamilization? Not for everyone. Unequal labour-market participation among informal caregivers in Europe

Growing care dependencies among the elderly due to population ageing in Europe challenge the labour-market participation of informal caregivers. While familiarized care regimes incentivize family caregiving by providing many cash-for-care-benefits, resulting in reduced labour supply, defamiliarized care regimes allocate more public spending to care infrastructure, alleviating the care responsibilities placed on family members. At the same time, care provision on the micro-level is distributed unequally across gender, age, and socioeconomic status. The question then emerges: Does the labour-market participation of informal caregivers vary between and within countries depending on the social-expenditure policy of welfare states? To answer this research question, a multilevel design was used, employing SHARE data and macro-indicators from OECD and Eurostat databases. The results reveal higher probabilities of labour-market participation for informal caregivers in general when social expenditures on formal care infrastructure are higher. However, labour-market participation was observed as being unequally distributed among the heterogeneous group of persons with and without caregiving duties. Women and individuals of lower socioeconomic status did not benefit from social expenditures in the same way as their counterparts, leading to lower levels of labour-market participation.

Exploring the Impact of Adjusting the Basic Pension on Lower-Income Groups in the German Pension System

Abstract This article explores the impact of adjustments to the basic pension (Grundrente) on lower income groups in the German pension system. This is done by hypothesizing that the basic pension reform is weakening status maintenance in the German welfare state for lower-income groups. We analyse monetary gains from the basic pension across different groups. We then adjust the eligibility criteria for the basic pension regarding the length of contribution periods and earning points threshold. From these findings, the paper develops a systematization for what needs to be considered in future pension reforms if the equivalence principle for lower-income groups is to be weakened.