Search results

During the last decade of the Twentieth Century the advanced North Atlantic economies performed in a markedly profitable way seen from the perspective of corporate business. This has neither led, however, to the impediment of a deepening social crisis, nor to the arrest of a crisis for liberal political values and norms of citizenship. On the contrary social exclusion was exacerbated, increasingly racialized and associated with immigrants and new visible ethnic minorities. A perhaps more conspicuous, but closely related, manifestation of this crisis of welfare and political values has, within the European Union, been the upturn of new nationalist, racist-populist political movements centered on the “problem of immigration.” This change of the political spectrum, brought about by the new right nationalist-populist upsurge, may eventually jeopardize the whole project of European integration, and the current tightening up of European regimes of both immigration and the societal incorporation of immigrants obviously reflects such worries. Simultaneously, however, influential employers, politicians and public servants have, time after time, cried out for the need for continued and increased large-scale import of low- as well as high-skilled migrant labor, seen as a remedy to Europe’s imminent “demographic crisis.”

Technology access, digital skills, and digital services are increasingly prerequisites for public life and accessing public services. The digital divide in contemporary societies matters for efforts to digitalize the welfare state. Research has already mapped individual determinants of digital exclusion and the existence of an age-related digital divide. However, far less attention has been paid to variations in digital inclusion between countries and to their potential explanations related to political systems. This study explores the influence of variations in welfare regimes on the digital divide among seniors (aged 65+) in Europe.

This article presents time-series cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors in European countries. The analyses are based on data from Eurostat, the World Bank, and the UN E-Government Survey.

The authors find extensive variation in the digital inclusion of citizens between welfare regimes and argue that considering regime differences improves the understanding of these variations. The findings indicate that the age-related digital divide seems to be least evident in countries with more universalistic welfare regimes and most evident in countries where seniors rely more on their families.

This is the first comparative study of the association between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors.

The purpose of this paper is to map and understand work-family state support for the self-employed compared to employees across European countries.

To map state work-family support policies for the self-employed, an overview of public childcare, maternity, paternity, and parental leave arrangements across European countries is created based on databases, local government web sites, and local experts’ country notes. Secondary data analyses are conducted in order to compare support for the self-employed to support for employees and across countries. Differences across countries are analysed from a welfare state regime perspective, which explicates assumptions about the role of the government in providing work-family state support and which is often used in research on work-family support for employees.

Results show that, in general, the self-employed receive less work-family state support than employees or none at all. The extensiveness of work-family state support varies widely across European countries. Patterns of welfare states regimes, which explain variation in work-family support for employees, can also be found in the context of self-employment.

Findings result in practical suggestions for policy makers at the European and national level to monitor policy compliance considering maternity leave for the self-employed, to increase childcare support, and to rethink the European Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan.

Work-family state support for the growing number of self-employed has never been mapped before, although this is a very topical issue for (European) policy makers. This paper offers a starting point to contextualise and understand the way self-employed experience the work-family interface in different country contexts.

The article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of older people's situation in the labour market in three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Three Nordic countries are taken as a reference point to compare the countries in order to better understand the situation from a comparative point of view. The article asks the questions: Does a longer working life for older people contribute to their better economic situation? How satisfied are they with a longer working life and their working conditions? Do they experience any discrimination in the labour market because of their age?

In order to understand the situation of older people in the labour market, the authors employ welfare state models and the Active Ageing Index. The welfare state models help us to understand the context in which the working life of older people is taking place. The Active Ageing Index helps to gain a better understanding of the employment domain of active ageing. The analysis is based on several Europe-wide data sources: statistics on earnings from Eurostat database, information on income, job prospects, occupational safety and health, training, working life perspectives from the European Working Conditions Survey as well as a special survey, conducted by the authors, of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian residents aged 50 years and older.

Analysis conducted reveals that in the Baltic countries older employees, although actively participating in the labour market, face unfavourable material, physical and psychological situation in the labour market more frequently than their younger colleagues. The findings show that the most important factors influencing older employees' decision to stay longer in the labour market in the Baltic countries are linked mostly to welfare state-related issues, i.e. financial benefits, healthcare, possibility to reconcile work and family obligations. These welfare state-related issues are even more important for those who are going to stay longer in the labour market after reaching the retirement age.

This article contributes to a better understanding of older (50+) people's situation in the labour market. It suggests that, while the increasing employment of older people increases the Active Ageing Index and is generally viewed positively, in some countries with less developed welfare states high employment rates of older employees, although providing them with an additional means of livelihood, do not ensure a higher quality of life and, on the contrary, act as a factor reducing the quality of work and, at the same time, the quality of life.

This paper takes an ideal type of different welfare regimes as a starting point. It investigates with survey data people's experiences and expectations towards the welfare state and its functioning against various social risks. The paper discusses questions like, are there differences in perceptions between welfare regimes? And what is the role of the welfare state regime in explaining those differences?

This research article is based on OECD survey data and classical welfare state classifications. The analysis of welfare regimes provides both a theoretical and methodological structure for study. The study-applied analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) to test a hypothesis that regimes matter analyses more nuanced aspects of current and prospects to the near future welfare state provision.

This examination suggests that welfare regimes still matter even though the differences in averages were not as immense as expected. Perceptions in different welfare regimes also have priorities related to the willingness to pay more taxes in order to receive better access to services and financial support if needed. In Nordic countries, the acute priority based on survey data is investment in education and re-training. In Continental Europe, more financial support is needed for pensions. Overall, respondents representing emerging Eastern European and Mediterranean welfare regimes think that welfare provision should be financed more compared to other welfare regime respondents. Health is a universal and unifying issue, particularly in ageing welfare states, and brings health as a traditional and central question again.

Respondents' perceptions work as people's voice and assessments are used to gain a contemporary understanding of welfare and about welfare state functioning.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on those “meeting points” and “encountering places” where the action of individuals, families, corporations, NGOs and public policies can optimize the advancement of social citizenship within the European context.

An analysis of the worlds of welfare capitalism is contrasted with a corporate social responsibility (CSR) typology of policy governance. It serves the purpose of highlighting not only institutional arrangements and operational welfare rationales, but also value‐systems and cultural tenets shaping commonalities and diversities in public policy governance in the European Union.

Considerations are made on the impacts that both the global order and the “new social risks” (NSR) have for the promotion of CSR and the advancement of social citizenship. The case of the reconciliation of work and family life illustrates how CSR might induce a greater role for businesses in welfare development.

Further research is needed to establish the linkages between the welfare regime approach and the models of public policy supports for CSR.

The paper is original in its theoretical linking of welfare mix, CSR and social citizenship with regard to the improvement of citizens’ living conditions.

In the twenty-first century, societies around the world are facing a wide range of daunting global mega-challenges: poverty, unemployment, income inequality, unequal distribution of political power, ageing populations, uncontrolled migration, segregated urbanisation, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and a massive decrease in biodiversity. In recent years, politicians, journalists and academic observers have singled out the Nordic countries, Denmark in particular, as model societies of trusting and happy people that have handled many of these challenges with remarkable effectiveness. And yet others warn against ‘becoming Denmark,’ painting a picture of a dysfunctional, socialist nightmare with high taxes, low job motivation and a general lack of private initiative. In this introductory chapter, the editors cut through the noise of the international debate and set the scene for the nuanced analyses presented here of contemporary public governance in Demark and its capacity to tackle some of the most pressing problems of our time. Specifically, the chapter discusses various conceptualisations of the Danish welfare state, delineates some of its most important historical and structural traits and outlines the main empirical features of contemporary Danish public governance. Finally, it outlines the structure of the book and briefly introduces each of its subsequent chapters.

Revitalising 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.

To this end, a time series cross-sectional analysis is carried out, covering 16 European countries for the period 2003–2011.

Results 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.

The 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.

European Union (EU) member states are dedicated to a set of sustainable development goals, among them to: (1) promote well-being for all at all the ages and (2) achieve gender equality. This chapter uses the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology that enables comprehensive measurement of intergenerational transfers, both public and private, and differences in the gender equality promotion among the countries. Our analysis is based on the fully comparable NTA results for 25 EU countries from 2010. The authors perform cluster analysis based on five indicators, measuring the importance of different types of age reallocations and the differences in gender equality promotion among the EU countries. Since the economic life cycle (showing the level of dependency) and its financing strongly depend on country-specific institutional and cultural settings, the authors link their results with the typical welfare regimes’ typology. The authors end up with three different groups of countries showing a clear north–south division of countries.