Showing papers in "Journal of European Social Policy in 2002"

Three worlds of welfare capitalism or more? A state-of-the-art report:

Abstract: This paper surveys the debate regarding Esping-Andersen's typology of welfare states and reviews the modified or alternative typologies ensuing from this debate. We confine ourselves to the classif...

The first part-time economy in the world: a model to be followed?:

Abstract: Cet article a pose et a repondu a quatre questions. Quel a ete la cause de la diffusion rapide du travail a temps partiel aux Pays-Bas ? Comment a ete evitee la marginalisation des travailleurs a temps partiel ? Est ce que l'actuel modele d'un revenu et demi par menage constitue une phase transitionnelle vers un modele a deux revenus; ? et finalement l'exemple hollandais sera-t-il suivi par d'autres Etat Providences europeens ?Cet article cherche a montrer que le modele hollandais d'un revenu et demi n'a pas ete le resultat d'une politique deliberement planifiee des gouvernements, des syndicats ou encore des employeurs mais plutot le resultat des pressions venu d'en bas et de changements politiques les accompagnant. Le choix d'un travail a temps partiel est etroitement lie a l'arrivee tardive et rapide des femmes mariees sur le marche du travail et la penurie de structures d'accueil des enfants dans ce qui n'etait il n'y a pas si longtemps un Etat Providence fortement marque par le modele d'un seul revenu...

Leaving home: a comparative analysis of ECHP data

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

Aggregate level and determining factors of social exclusion in twelve European countries

Abstract: There has been a shift in the public discourse of many EU countries from `poverty' to `social exclusion'. This article treats chronic cumulative disadvantage as a proxy for `social exclusion' and provides an empirical application using data from the ECHP. Social exclusion appears to be more widespread in Southern European countries with relatively underdeveloped welfare states and the countries associated with the `Liberal' welfare state regime. The results of multivariate analysis demonstrate that in most countries, lack of full-time employment, low educational qualifications, lone parenthood, non-EU citizenship and bad health are positively and significantly associated with increased risk of social exclusion. In contrast, the effect of being an elderly citizen living alone or a member of an elderly couple is found to be negatively associated with the risk of social exclusion in Northern but positively in Southern Europe. Finally, country and welfare regime effects turn out to be significant in explainin...

Open coordination against poverty: the new EU `social inclusion process'

Abstract: Until the mid 1990s, the notion of Social Europe was primarily associated with the introduction of binding supranational rules aimed at safeguarding and possibly upgrading the social protection systems of the Member States. The political and institutional obstacles to such kind of rules were well known in practice and well understood in theory - especially in the wake of the negative vs. positive integration debate. But 'hard law' seemed to be the only effective strategy of action, given the low impact of weaker institutional tools such as recommendations, on the one hand, and the growing incentives for 'social dumping' generated by the completion of the internal market, on the other hand. The second half of the 1990s witnessed a gradual change of climate and perspective. Binding legislation continued to be seen as a very important ingredient of Europe's social dimension: indeed the debate on fundamental rights and on a possible fully-fledged EU constitution shifted the front of legal ambitions even further. But at the same time another strategy of policy intervention started to be considered and experimented with, resting on a complex mix of soft institutional ingredients, endowed with a strong potential of conditioning the direction of change at the national level. Originally applied in the area of employment, this new approach was then extended to other policy sectors - and most notably, policies to combat social exclusion - under the name of 'open method of coordination' (OMC), coined during the Portuguese Presidency in 2000. The main institutional ingredients of the OMC are common guidelines, national action plans, peer reviews, joint evaluation reports and recommendations. None of such instruments has a binding character, underpinned by legal enforcement powers. Moreover, while providing policy actors with a relatively clear agenda, the mix of these ingredients leaves ample room

Investing in services in West European welfare states

Abstract: During the 1990s considerable energy in the field of welfare state research was devoted to analysing patterns of difference and similarity among welfare states. An overwhelming majority of typology-related research has been interested in forms of monetary support, using data on cash benefits. As welfare states are also composed of other collective redistribution mechanisms to promote the life chances of their populations, calls to include social services (Alber, 1995; Anttonen and Sipilä, 1996; Munday, 1996) in typology construction have been voiced. More recent research on welfare state variation has suggested it is precisely social services that may account for the greatest differences between welfare states (Sipilä, 1997; Castles, 1998), and Daly and Lewis (2000) have rightfully argued that a focus on both cash and service dimensions of welfare states could lead to a more encompassing analysis of welfare state change and variation. This article explores the diversity among welfare states in their service investments, and addresses the variation in their redistribution strategies by focusing on both services and transfers. We first consider the old distinction between the ‘transfer approach’ and the ‘service approach’ to social policy, and then examine family resemblances and trends by employing Eurostat social protection expenditure data. The transfer and service approaches to social policy

The generational conflict reconsidered

Abstract: The deteriorating trend in the incomes of families with young children is of increasing concern to both academics and politicians. Since the well-being of the elderly has improved concomitantly, many see an emerging generational clash. We argue that this zero-sum distributional trade-off view is largely premised on an overly static analysis and prefer, as an alternative, to examine the age-distribution of well-being through the lens of cohort dynamics. The aim of this article is very policy applied, an attempt to identify a win-win policy model that simultaneously ensures child and elderly welfare. We argue that social investments in children now will have strong and positive secondary effects in terms of helping maintain welfare guarantees for the elderly in the future. The key lies in minimizing child poverty, and we evaluate which policy mix may prove most effective for this end. We conclude that, in most countries, the elimination of poverty in families with children would be surprisingly affordable.

Multiple deprivation and persistent poverty in the European Union

Abstract: The literature on social exclusion has focused attention on the processes leading to exposure to multiple disadvantage. Despite the influence this perspective has had on both academic and policy discussions, conceptual analysis has remained imprecise and empirical evidence modest. We have made use of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) in order to examine the extent to which persistent income poverty results in multiple deprivation. Our analysis shows that only a modest proportion of the persistently poor can be characterized as being exposed to such deprivation. While persistent poverty and multiple deprivation combine to produce extremely high levels of economic strain, there is no evidence that they interact in a significant fashion. We argue that understanding deprivation is not facilitated by focusing on a cleavage between a multiply deprived minority and a comfortable majority, and we consider the policy implications of this argument.

Review Essay: The new politics and scholarship of the welfare state:

Abstract: The development of the advanced welfare states has long been an issue attracting enormous scholarly attention within both political science and sociology. For a long time, the welfare state literature was about explaining the growth of modern welfare states in general as well as variation across OECD countries.1 However, since the publication of Pierson’s seminal work (1994; 1996), the welfare state debate has increasingly shifted towards the question of welfare state retrenchment. Numerous journal articles and books about welfare state retrenchment have been published, and we believe that this literature is now so extensive that a review is warranted. Pierson argues that the politics of retrenchment is qualitatively different from the politics of expansion. We claim that the scholarship about retrenchment is also markedly different from the scholarship about the expansion of the welfare state. The expansion literature was dominated by economic and sociological approaches focusing on the societal forces shaping the growth of the welfare state (van Kersbergen, forthcoming). Following van Kersbergen, we argue that the retrenchment literature is dominated by political science approaches. We claim that this is partly visible in the factors highlighted in investigations of retrenchment at the level of welfare states and partly in the attention paid to differences across policy sectors. This review has four sections. First, there is a brief outline of Pierson’s main argument. Then we turn to the main part of the review; the post-Pierson debate. Here we will first look at the factors suggested as explanations for retrenchment at the level of welfare states, and subsequently we turn to the factors suggested to explain retrenchment in relation to specific policy sectors focusing on pensions and health policy. We finish with some suggestions for a further research agenda.2

Introduction: EU social (exclusion) policy revisited?

Abstract: Since the mid-1990s, several steps have been taken towards an integration of social policy in the EU. Yet there is reluctance in many quarters to go further. This article introduces the special iss...

Welfare trends in Sweden: balancing the books for the 1990s:

Abstract: Welfare trends in Sweden: balancing the books for the 1990s : Journal of European Social Policy

Poverty in Europe in the mid-1990s: the effectiveness of means-tested benefits

Abstract: This article examines the income maintenance policies of several members of the European Union and three candidate countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. It addresses the issue of the effectiveness of these policies and especially means-tested safety nets in alleviating poverty. To assess the effectiveness of the policies, we use data from the Luxembourg Income Study. We analyse the incidence of poverty based on the EU poverty line and poverty reduction for the entire population and vulnerable groups - the unemployed, solo mothers, large families, and the elderly. During the 1990s the poverty rates increased in most countries and for most vulnerable groups. Means-tested benefits assumed growing importance in alleviating poverty, and several countries have improved their schemes to guarantee a minimum income. At the same time reforms have produced diversity in the safety nets across Europe.

Beyond privatization: pension reform in the Czech Republic and Slovenia

Abstract: Research on the political economy of pension reform has focused on the recent wave of pension privatizations in the post-socialist region. This paper is motivated by the need to shed more light on cases where radical reform was rejected. Pension privatization did not proceed when the World Bank and the Ministry of Finance - important advocates of radical reform - were absent from the pension reform arena and the Ministry of Social Affairs was the only relevant reform actor. Moreover, unions need not be secondary actors, but may effectively veto pension privatization. The paper highlights the importance of the specific political and economic conditions that may constrain the leeway of pension reform actors, while also discussing the global politics of attention.

Reciprocity, justice and statutory health insurance in Germany

Abstract: It has often been claimed that modern societies are not only characterized by a growing social differentiation and individualization but also by a corresponding decline of solidarity and moral cohesion. Taking the thesis of a decline of solidaristic attitudes as a starting point and using the social (i.e. solidaristically financed) health insurance in Germany as an example, this article analyses whether `modern' solidaristic attitudes exist and which individual interests and value orientations explain the expressed acceptance of solidarity. Based on qualitative data material, the action orientations of the insured are analysed. It is found that the insured have indeed predominantly solidaristic attitudes and that they refer above all to notions of reciprocity and justice to explain their acceptance of the solidarity principle. This kind of data material does not allow a trend analysis concerning the `solidarity-decline-thesis'. Nevertheless the results are a contribution to a `grounded' explanation of the...

Social exclusion and macro-economic policy in Europe: a problem of dynamic and spatial change

Abstract: This article assesses whether macroeconomic developments in Europe will assist the reduction of social exclusion under EMU. It concludes that the objectives of the Lisbon Council will be difficult to meet. Enlargement, ageing and the `new economy' may alter projections but more rapid structural change has adverse asymmetric effects on average and regional unemployment. As increased public spending can have disincentive effects, combating exclusion needs to focus on building `capabilities' to participate in society and economic activity. However, constraints from EMU are largely illusory. Although problems might arise if the fiscal policies adopted by different countries pull in different directions, these can be attenuated by sensible coordination mechanisms.

Pensions and the reduction of non-wage labour costs. Modelling a decade of reforms in Germany

Abstract: The reduction of non-wage labour costs has become a top priority of virtually all social insurance reforms in the European Union. This paper starts out by discussing the levers politicians can theoretically manipulate to lower non-wage labour costs without undermining the equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in social security, focusing on pension schemes. After a discussion of general options open to policymakers, the paper discusses the reforms in Germany during the past decade, in particular the most recent pension reform that seeks to introduce a privately administered funded element into the statutory scheme. It concludes by critically assessing the extent to which this partial return to funding will allow the country to overcome the pending demographic crisis of social security, and by pointing to reform options that have not been considered.

Contract Compliance: sub-national and European influences in Northern Ireland

Abstract: This paper focuses on the use of contract compliance in Northern Ireland (NI) — the use of public sector contracts to pursue wider social and economic policy goals. Such goals may include equal opportunities (gender, race, religion, disability), employment rights (part-time workers, transfer of undertakings), development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or employment creation (for example, the long-term unemployed). Public procurement policy in Northern Ireland is undergoing review, including assessing the impact of equality legislation on government procurement. The question that the paper poses is: to what extent do subnational, national, regional (i.e. European Union) and global laws and policies on public procurement hinder or enhance the likelihood of an effective contract compliance regime in Northern Ireland?

Book Reviews: Helen Barnes Working for a Living? Employment, Benefits and the Living Standards of Disabled People Bristol, The Polity Press, 2000, 152 pp., £14.99 (pbk), ISBN 1 86134 186 5:

Abstract: Townsend and Gordon of the conclusions which can be drawn from the work reported in the rest of the book and the prospects for future international work aimed at the measurement of poverty and the development of policies to combat it. Their conclusions are bold (and bold-faced in the text) – objective poverty lines can be established, social exclusion can be distinguished from poverty, international support for a commitment to operationalize scientific measurement must be widely mobilized – and they challenge the World Bank and other international agencies to take up the potential that academic research now offers for a renewed assault on poverty. It is a wide-ranging and challenging conclusion to a wide-ranging and informative collection of papers. Those who wish to familiarize themselves with the theoretical and empirical developments in this field of recent years will find here a summary of much important work, albeit that the very different contributions do not consistently address any underlying framework or argument. Those looking for a report on research evidence of poverty in Europe will be disappointed, although the title of the book might lead some to expect just this. The focus of concern is on what could, or should, be done to measure poverty in Europe, not what has.

Book Reviews: Ester B. Neunreither Die Interessenvertretung der Regionen bei der Europäischen Union. Deutsche Länder, spanische Autonome Gemeinschaften und französische Regionen [Interest Representation of the Regions towards the European Union. German Länder, Spanish Autonomous Communities and French Regions] Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2001, 213 pp., DM74, ISBN 3 631 37560 3

Abstract: From the perspective of democratic theory, the inclusion of the subnational level into European policy-making processes is highly relevant. In her PhD thesis Ester B. Neunreither analyses the implications of European integration on the European strategies of interest representation of regional public actors. Comparing the German Länder, the Spanish Autonomous Communities and the French Regions, Neunreither sets out to assess the possibilities of regional influence on the European policy process against the background of very different starting points regarding the legal status of the regions at the national level and their varying administrative, cultural, financial and political resources. The analysis follows neoinstitutionalism (Chapter 2) and applies Leonardo Parri’s territorial political exchange model to the European multilevel system (Chapter 1), using secondary data and qualitative personal interviews. The starting point of the study is a comparison of the financial and political-administrative resources of the subnational level in the three countries (Chapter 3). From the data presented it is quite clear that the politicoinstitutional as well as financial prerequisites of the German Länder for participating in the Euro-politics of their national government are much better than those of their Spanish and French counterparts, which is attributed to different developments and degrees of regionalization (or federalization) in the three countries (Chapter 4). Neunreither’s presentation of country differences in terms of national-level (indirect) European interest representation as well as formal direct interest representation in the Committee of the Regions and in the Council of Ministers by subnational entities is thorough, and understanding is greatly aided by a number of comparative tables. But the informed reader profits much more from her analysis of informal direct European level interest representation in the form of regional ‘information bureaux’ in Brussels (Chapter 5). Based on personal interviews, Neunreither presents the discussion provoked in all three countries by the opening of regional ‘information offices’, where the national level felt its exclusive right of external and diplomatic representation was being jeopardized. Further, the author gives a detailed account of the financial and personnel resources of the regional offices in Brussels, and, as a final point, she examines national differences regarding the activities of the regional offices. Neunreither shows that the German Länder’s representation offices are not only information providers but also concentrate their activities on political interest representation. Due to their high resources, they can fall back on a whole range of lobbying instruments such as the initiation of working groups including public and economic actors from the European as well as the national level; the development of personal contacts in the framework of cultural fringe events within the Länder’s own locations; or the careful elaboration of position papers which might be used as a draft by the European Commission. The analysis of the Spanish regional offices demonstrates that the varying degrees of autonomy granted to the different subnational Spanish entities by the central state result in variation of available resources and strategies applied in Brussels. The main function of all Spanish bureaux is the collection and provision of information for both their region and the European Commission, but those Spanish Autonomous Communities which have access to higher resources try to follow the German Book Review

Book Reviews: Florian Meyerhöfer Soziale Mindestandards in Europa. Deutsche und französische soziale Minima im Angesicht der Harmonisierungspolitik der Europäischen Union Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2000, 199 pp., £24.00, ISBN 3 631 36236 6:

Abstract: approaches and most are accessible to nonspecialists. In the opening chapter the editors identify the broad trade-offs between equity, efficiency and stabilization objectives faced by reformers. They identify the common factors that have raised the cost of the disincentives generated by current European tax and benefit systems. Differences in tastes, norms and institutions (particularly wage-setting and legal) they argue, both prevent the design of a common blueprint and explain the piecemeal and fragmented reforms. This overview is complemented by Bourguignon’s use of the optimum tax model to examine the equity efficiency trade-off. Redistribution systems across Europe are shown to share some common features, though justification for the volume’s emphasis upon the effective marginal tax rate across lower-income groups relies upon concern with dynamic poverty traps and social exclusion. The three chapters in the second part of the volume describe the burden of taxation and the relative generosity of European welfare systems. Martinez-Mongay and FernándezBayón analyse the evolution of the tax wedge. Their analysis suggests a strong causal relationship from government expenditure to the level of labour taxation and from the level of labour taxation to unemployment. Salomäki surveys alternative methodologies for computing net replacement rates for the unemployed. A common finding is that net replacement rates for low-paid workers are higher than for other groups. Given that unemployment benefits are often complemented or substituted by other benefits, this study argues that the whole range of benefits needs to be considered in any evaluation of the working of benefit systems. Sestito and Ca’Zorzi’s analysis of social protection expenditure indicates that there has been no significant retreat of welfare systems in Europe, though member states are shown to differ considerably in the size and composition of their expenditures, and in their sensitivity to employment changes. The final four chapters evaluate the effects of tax and welfare reforms. Blundell examines US, Canadian and UK experience with ‘in work’ benefits for low-income workers. After reviewing alternative evaluation methods, he concludes that carefully designed programmes can produce significant increases in labour market participation. Blomquist and Eklöf also find strong labour supply effects in their study of Swedish tax reforms. Bovenberg, Graafland and de Mooij use an applied general equilibrium model to explore the contribution of tax and benefit reforms to the ‘Dutch miracle’. In the final chapter, Roeger and Wijkander utilize a two-sector, two skilltype, two-commodity model to assess alternative tax responses to the combination of skill-biased technical progress and rigid relative wages. In their Introduction the editors explain that ‘Recognizing and understanding the complex trade-offs – a precondition to pushing the reform process forward – is the aim of this volume’ (p. 17). Given the diversity of methodologies that follow, a key weakness of this volume is the absence of any attempt to draw some tentative conclusions about how best to quantify these trade-offs.

Book Reviews: D. Gordon and P. Townsend (eds) Breadline Europe: the Measurement of Poverty Bristol, Policy Press, 2000, ix + 465 pp., £50.00 (hbk), £17.99 (pbk) ISBN 1 86134 293 4:

Abstract: This book is the product of a considerable amount of research work and theoretical analysis on poverty and social exclusion carried out over a number of years by a wide range of academic experts, including Peter Townsend, probably now the leading academic scholar writing on poverty and still active in the Centre for International Poverty Research at Bristol which produced the book. The papers published here have been developed from those presented at a series of seminars funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council from 1998 to 2000, and focus on European debates about the definition and measurement of poverty and social exclusion. They cover a wide range of material and report on many aspects of these debates. Their great strength is this breadth of coverage and analysis; their weakness, such as it is, is the relative lack of focus of the collection as a whole. The introductory chapter sets out a bold agenda for the rest of the book, ‘... to provide the best scientific and international basis for the analysis and reduction of poverty’ (p. 1), and goes on to review recent European evidence on the growth of poverty and policy commitments to respond to this, setting this in the context of the 1995 Copenhagen World Summit’s call to reduce ‘absolute’ and ‘overall’ poverty. Following this the book is divided into two parts. Part I concentrates on the questions of definition and measurement. Two chapters explore in more detail the international policy context and the implications of the Copenhagen agreement. These are followed by contributions from Gordon and others at the Bristol centre which summarize and build on the research which they have carried out in recent years in Britain on poverty and social exclusion, utilizing the methodology developed in the 1980s for the television series Breadline Britain (Gordon et al., 2000; Mack and Lansley, 1985). They argue that such research could be extended to provide evidence of living standards and social exclusion across Europe. There are also chapters on women and poverty, and health and poverty, and a chapter by Veit-Wilson taking up some of the issues arising from his earlier work on the setting of minimum income standards by governments (Veit-Wilson, 1998). Part II reports on research work undertaken on poverty and social exclusion in Europe. There are chapters on Finland, Ireland, Russia and Central and Eastern Europe. There is also a summary of Bradshaw’s international study of comparative levels of child poverty. Then there are three chapters on the concept of social exclusion. Levitas reviews recent UK policy approaches and the indicators that have been developed to measure success in these, situating them overall within the social integration discourse (SID), which she has outlined before (Levitas, 1998). Burchardt looks at empirical evidence on the dynamics of exclusion emerging from panel survey research in the UK. And Room seeks to develop a dynamic framework for capturing the trajectories of exclusion internationally across countries in the developed and developing worlds. Book reviews 85