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This paper aims to examine how population heterogeneity contributes to poverty in 17 high-income Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries during 1980-2005…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how population heterogeneity contributes to poverty in 17 high-income Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries during 1980-2005.
Design/methodology/approach
The operational strategy involves linking poverty with heterogeneity directly as well as indirectly through welfare state policies as a latent variable in a structural equation framework.
Findings
Findings support the widely held poverty-reducing roles of welfare state policies. Ethno-racial and religious diversities are found to positively contribute to welfare state policies and, through them, lower poverty, whereas immigration assumes opposite roles.
Research limitations/implications
Data limitations on population and especially ethno-racial and religious heterogeneity caution against definitiveness.
Originality/value
The findings are useful in understanding the heterogeneity connection of welfare state policies and poverty.
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Zhen Tian, Tauchid Komara Yuda and Zhiming Hu
This article focuses on the continuity and changes in the Productive Welfare Regimes and investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic and population ageing can influence the established…
Abstract
Purpose
This article focuses on the continuity and changes in the Productive Welfare Regimes and investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic and population ageing can influence the established systems in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.
Design/methodology/approach
Our research is based on document review, investigating intricate situations with numerous aspects and providing an excellent opportunity for innovation and examining theoretical presumptions in welfare regime theory, as well as exploring the complicated policy trajectories that varies among cases.
Findings
Our findings reveal that social policy responses to COVID-19 have been characterized by adopting the market-conforming role of social policy for the elderly. This is shown by many policy measures focusing on self-sufficiency and an active labour market, signalling that the COVID-19 pandemic and population ageing pressure here are viewed as an economic issue over social rights. The economic-first was adopted to maintain their proximity to the global economy as key sources of their social policy development. We can conclude by emphasizing that the responses to COVID-19 have exposed deficiencies in certain existing social policies. Yet, they have not been sufficient to catalyse substantial policy changes across domains where such change had not already been initiated, thus allowing welfare regimes to remain within productivist boundaries.
Originality/value
This study responds to the current debate on the welfare regime continuity and adaptation in East Asia and suggests a new perspective of policy process in the times of insecurity.
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Immigration represents one of the most contentious and complicated issues for social democracy in many national contexts. In Scandinavia, the social democratic parties have been…
Abstract
Immigration represents one of the most contentious and complicated issues for social democracy in many national contexts. In Scandinavia, the social democratic parties have been particularly tormented, being split internally on central concerns related to immigration policy. Social democratic parties in Scandinavia have had a basically ambiguous relationship to the issue from the initiation of the era of ‘new immigration’. This chapter argues that this can be explained by the specifically strong attachment and ‘ownership’ of these parties to the Scandinavian welfare model, with its particular claims on a strong tax base and an orderly labour market. ‘Social democracy’ is dealt with mainly as an institutional and political entity, close to what goes as ‘The Nordic Model’ in the international literature. The chapter describes and analyses similarities and differences between the three Scandinavian countries, through a historical exposé of the period after the early 1970s; on the one hand, the institutional and normative prerequisites for social democracies in handling migration, and on the other hand, the way in which recent flows of migrants have influenced the very same social democracies. Theoretically, the chapter is drawing on conceptual tools from political economy, citizenship discourse and institutional theory.
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This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of key stakeholders working with homeless people during the implementation of universal credit during the austerity years.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of key stakeholders working with homeless people during the implementation of universal credit during the austerity years.
Design/methodology/approach
The literature on austerity reveals welfare reforms’ impact on support services staff. Service providers’ perceptions of the impact of austerity-led policies and welfare reform via nine interviews with people working in homelessness organisations in Brighton and Hove in the UK. Service providers see the situation for their service users has gotten worse and that the policies make it more difficult to extricate themselves from their current situation. Three central themes relating to the impact of austerity-led welfare reforms were, namely, Universal Credit: the imposition of a precarious livelihood on welfare claimants; a double-edged sword: “If people are sanctioned: people can’t pay”; and “Hard to maintain my own mental equilibrium”.
Findings
More precisely, this paper captures service providers’ perceptions and experiences of the impact of austerity-led policies on their services and how they believe this, in turn, impacts their clients and their own lives.
Research limitations/implications
The dimension cuts across service provision to vulnerable people and is intertwined with health and well-being outcomes. Austerity is detrimental to the health of service users and their clients. It is known that when it comes to the health and well-being of the most vulnerable, who have suffered most from the impacts of austerity policies. However, in times of open austerity, it falls also on those trying to ease their suffering.
Originality/value
The data suggest that policies were developed and accentuated by austerity, which led to the stripping of welfare support from vulnerable people. This process has impacted the people who rely on welfare and service providers.
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Tijs Laenen and Dimitri Gugushvili
In the social policy literature, it is often assumed that universal policies are more popular than selective ones among the public, because they supposedly generate broader…
Abstract
Purpose
In the social policy literature, it is often assumed that universal policies are more popular than selective ones among the public, because they supposedly generate broader self-interested coalitions and are considered morally superior. The present article revisits and challenges this assumption.
Design/methodology/approach
The article critically reviews the existing empirical literature on public support for universal and means-tested welfare schemes.
Findings
The main conclusion is that the popularity of universal vis-à-vis selective welfare remains very much an open question. First, the studies that are typically cited to support the claim that universalism is indeed more popular are inconclusive because they conflate the institutional design of welfare programs with their respective target groups. Second, there is considerable variation in public support for universal and selective welfare across countries, time and policy domains.
Research limitations/implications
The findings suggest that future research should focus on scrutinizing under which circumstances – when, where and why – universal social policies are more popular than selective ones.
Originality/value
The article makes an original case for considering perceived welfare deservingness of social policies' target groups alongside the policy design when studying popular support for differently targeted welfare schemes.
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Introduces a special issue on globalization and the welfare state. Asserts that economic globalization constrains national economic and social policy far more now than ever…
Abstract
Introduces a special issue on globalization and the welfare state. Asserts that economic globalization constrains national economic and social policy far more now than ever before, although the level of international trade has not increased that much compared to levels at the beginning of this century. Talks about the political consequences of economic globalization, particularly welfare state retrenchment in the advanced capitalist world. Outlines the papers included in this issue – comparing welfare system changes in Sweden, the UK and the USA; urban bias in state policy‐making in Mexico; and the developing of the Israeli welfare state. Concludes that economic globalization has a limited effect in shaping social welfare policy in advanced capitalist countries; nevertheless, recommends further research into which aspects of economic globalization shape social welfare policy.
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Glenn W. Harrison and Don Ross
Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of…
Abstract
Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.
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What role do people's attitudes toward social policies play for the politics of welfare state reform? This chapter contributes to a growing scholarship on policy responsiveness in…
Abstract
What role do people's attitudes toward social policies play for the politics of welfare state reform? This chapter contributes to a growing scholarship on policy responsiveness in welfare state research with a longitudinal comparative case study of the Bismarckian welfare states of France and Germany. Quantitative analyses of changes in mean attitudes as well as polarization and inequalities of attitudes based on the 1996, 2006, and 2016 waves of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) Role of Government module are triangulated with a thick description of social policy changes. While recommodifying and defamilializing reforms in Germany transformed the welfare state fundamentally, there was more continuity in the French welfare state, in spite of a stronger focus on labor market activation policies. The quantitative results suggest that lower attitudinal stability toward the welfare state in Germany and lower polarization evoked a higher willingness for reform than in France, where more polarized attitudes and overall marginal changes in attitudes gave French governments less maneuverability in adopting reforms. In both countries, I find no evidence for an upper-class bias in policy responsiveness. In sum, my research supports the claim that change in public opinion toward the welfare state and diverging attitudes within societies play a role for the timing and direction of reforms.
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