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Authors:Cecilia Bruzelius, Nora Ratzmann, Lea Reiss Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Most research on the social policy–migration control link focuses on indirect control, that is, denying access to welfare. This article instead draws attention to how welfare institutions are made directly involved in migration control through duties to report certain categories of migrants to migration authorities. We ask how these obligations are put into practice and how local governments shape this process. In so doing, we place special emphasis on local organisational fields – that is, the close horizontal connection between public and non-public actors involved in basic needs provision. The article builds on exploratory research across four German cities, drawing on 61 interviews conducted in 2019–2020 with welfare actors catering to basic needs (housing/shelter, healthcare, social assistance, social counselling) and document research. Based on this, we, first, explore patterns of reporting practices and provide a typology of different responses, ranging from elaborate circumvention strategies to over-compliance. Second, we analyse the domino effects of reporting obligations, namely how welfare actors that are exempted from reporting adopt their practices too, with consequences both for migrants' welfare access and for other authorities' ability to report. Finally, we discuss how local governments can shape reporting practices, demonstrating how some cities actively sanction circumvention strategies. The last part identifies venues for further research. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2023-01-31T10:23:15Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221150182
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Authors:Konstantin A Kholodilin, Sebastian Kohl Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. The long-run U-shaped patterns of economic inequality are standardly explained by basic economic trends (Piketty’s r> g), taxation policies or ‘great levellers’ such as catastrophes. This article argues that housing policy, and particularly rent control, is a neglected explanatory factor in understanding macro inequality. We hypothesize that rent control could decrease overall housing wealth, lower incomes of generally richer landlords and increase disposable incomes of generally poorer tenants. Using original long-run data for up to 16 countries (1900–2016), we show that rent controls lowered wealth-to-income ratios, top income shares, Gini coefficients, rents and rental expenditure. Overall, rent controls need to be strict in order to have tangible effects, and only the stricter historical rent controls did significantly reduce inequalities. The study argues that housing policies should generally receive more attention in understanding economic inequalities. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2023-01-31T08:58:56Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221150179
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Authors:Helen Kowalewska Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. An accepted framework for ‘gendering’ the analysis of welfare regimes compares countries by degrees of ‘defamilialization’ or how far their family policies support or undermine women’s employment participation. This article develops an alternative framework that explicitly spotlights women’s labour market outcomes rather than policies. Using hierarchical clustering on principal components, it groups 24 industrialized countries by their simultaneous performance across multiple gendered employment outcomes spanning segregation and inequalities in employment participation, intensity, and pay, with further differences by class. The three core ‘worlds’ of welfare (social-democratic, corporatist, liberal) each displays a distinctive pattern of gendered employment outcomes. Only France diverges from expectations, as large gender pay gaps across the educational divide – likely due to fragmented wage-bargaining – place it with Anglophone countries. Nevertheless, the outcome-based clustering fails to support the idea of a homogeneous Mediterranean grouping or a singular Eastern European cluster. Furthermore, results underscore the complexity and idiosyncrasy of gender inequality: while certain groups of countries are ‘better’ overall performers, all have their flaws. Even the Nordics fall behind on some measures of segregation, despite narrow participatory and pay gaps for lower- and high-skilled groups. Accordingly, separately monitoring multiple measures of gender inequality, rather than relying on ‘headline’ indicators or gender equality indices, matters. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2023-01-19T12:04:46Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221148336
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Authors:Hyojin Seo First page: 3 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Studies have shown positive impact of family policies on women’s labour market participation over the last decades. How, then, does it influence the types of jobs women obtain when they (re-)enter the labour market' Using multi-level modelling, this study examines how different work–family balance policies (that is, leave policies, childcare services) shape gendered labour market patterns and whether or not it mitigates women’s overrepresentation among the labour market Outsiders across Europe. I use European Working Conditions Survey 2015 data and cover 30 European countries. Specifically focusing on women’s relative likelihood of being labour market Outsiders compared to men, I find that certain policies help women avoid being Outsiders, while the others may reinforce the existing gender inequality in the labour market. This resonates with the welfare state paradox and family policy trade-off literature that the policies that do not disrupt the gender norms may in turn maintain or enhance them. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2023-01-19T05:35:37Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221148916
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Authors:Dorottya Szikra, Kerem Gabriel Öktem Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Mainstream western-centric welfare state research has mostly confined itself to studying social policy in consolidated democracies and tends to assume a synergy between democracy and the welfare state. This article shifts the focus to welfare states in countries with declining democratic institutions and rising right-wing populist rule to explore a complex relationship between (de)democratization and welfare state reforms. We conduct a comparative case study of two extreme cases of democratic decline, Turkey and Hungary. We employ a sequential mixed method approach. First, we assess welfare efforts in the two countries to understand which policy areas were prioritized and whether autocratizing governments retrenched or expanded their welfare states. In the second stage, we explore the trajectory of welfare reforms in Hungary and Turkey, focusing on three analytically distinguishable dimensions of social policy change: policy content, policy procedures (including timing, parliamentary procedures, veto players); and the discourses accompanying reforms. We find that democratic decline facilitates rapid welfare state change but it does not necessarily mean retrenchment. Instead we observe ambivalent processes of welfare state restructuring. Common themes emerging in both countries are the rise of flagship programmes that ensure electoral support, a transition towards top-down decision-making and the salient role of discourse in welfare governance. Overall, similarities are stronger in procedures and discourse than in the direction of reforms. Differences in spending levels and policy content do not suggest that the two cases constitute a coherent illiberal welfare state regime. Instead, we see the emergence of authoritarian features that modify their original welfare models. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-12-21T02:03:29Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221141365
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Authors:Teresa Backhaus, Kai-Uwe Müller Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Minimum wages are increasingly discussed as an instrument against (in-work) poverty and income inequality in Europe. Just recently the German government opted for a substantial ad-hoc increase of the minimum-wage level to €12 per hour mentioning poverty prevention as an explicit goal. We use the introduction of the federal minimum wage in Germany in 2015 to study its redistributive impact on disposable household incomes. Based on the German Socio-Economic Panel we analyse changes in poverty and income inequality investigating different mechanisms of the transmission from individual gross wage-rates to disposable household incomes. We find that the minimum wage is an inadequate tool for income redistribution because it does not target poor households. Individuals affected by the minimum wage are not primarily in households at the bottom of the income distribution but are spread across it. Consequently, welfare dependence decreases only marginally. The withdrawal of transfers or employment effects cannot explain the limited effect on poverty. Complementary simulations show that neither full compliance nor a markedly higher level of €12 per hour can render the minimum wage more effective in reducing poverty. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-12-20T03:11:10Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221144233
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Authors:Iris Moolla, Paul Lambert Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Citizens’ attitudes towards their national healthcare are important indicators of satisfaction and of political perspectives. In this article we summarise individual and national level patterns in healthcare evaluations across Europe. An innovative feature of our analysis is that we demonstrate that assessing healthcare evaluations in relative terms (relative to citizens’ views about the performance of national institutions in other domains), offers new insights about individual and national level variations in attitudes. Thus, we introduce an indicator of relative attitudes towards healthcare and contrast it to an absolute measure in a cross-national analysis. We use a larger dataset than previous studies of healthcare evaluations including countries from all regions of Europe and spanning eight rounds of the European Social Survey (2002–2017, N = 342,000). We find that Europeans’ healthcare evaluations are multidimensional, with different patterns sometimes operating at an absolute and a relative level. When comparing countries, for instance, several nations in Southern and Eastern Europe compare poorly to other nations in their absolute ratings of healthcare but compare favourably if assessed in relative terms. Likewise, using a relative measure, most Scandinavian countries compare less favourably to other countries, but score positively when evaluations are measured in absolute terms. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-12-13T05:56:01Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221141366
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Authors:Dorian Kessler, Debra Hevenstone, Leen Vandecasteele, Samin Sepahniya Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This study examines whether unemployment insurance benefit generosity impacts divorce, drawing on full population administrative data and a Swiss reform that reduced unemployment insurance maximum benefit duration. We assess the effect of the reform by comparing the pre- to the post-reform change in divorce rates among unemployed individuals who were affected by the reform with the change in divorce rates among a statistically balanced group of unemployed individuals who was not affected by the reform. Difference-in-differences estimates suggest that the reform caused a 2.8 percentage point increase in divorce (a 25% increase). Effects were concentrated among low-income couples (+58%) and couples with an unemployed husband (+32%) though gender differences are attributable to men’s breadwinner status. Female main breadwinners were more strongly affected (+78%) than male main breadwinners (+40%). Results confirm the ‘family stress model’ which posits that job search and financial stress cause marital conflict. Policymakers should consider a broad array of impacts, including divorce, when considering reductions in unemployment insurance generosity. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-12-12T01:20:46Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221141363
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Authors:Ariane Bertogg First page: 17 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This study investigates how institutional and normative characteristics affect grandparents’ labour market participation. Previous studies indicate that providing regular grandchild care reduces labour market participation, and this linkage varies between European welfare states. Yet the underlying mechanisms remain unclear, and no study has systematically disentangled cultural from institutional influence when investigating grandparents’ work–care reconciliation. Based on two mechanisms, needs and obligations, we investigate how (grandparental) support norms and childcare infrastructure jointly shape the labour market participation of active grandparents. We use six waves from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), investigating variation across 91 subnational regions in 18 countries. The results indicate that the regular provision of grandchild care increases the risk of exiting the labour market for both men and women. This linkage is stronger in contexts with stronger support norms, but also depends on the childcare infrastructure in contexts where norms are weaker. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-08-04T06:55:39Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221115668
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Authors:Ellen Verbakel, Karen Glaser, Yasmina Amzour, Martina Brandt, Marjolein Broese van Groenou First page: 34 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Many countries have been working on revising their long-term care (LTC) policies to meet the increasing demand for care. Generally, little attention is paid to the potential (unintended) consequences of LTC policies for inequality among care users or informal caregivers. Saraceno previously explicitly argued that differences in care use and provision depend on the type of LTC policy, and that policies with contrasting consequences for inequality can be implemented at the same time. We call upon future research to empirically test the impact of different types of LTC policies on socio-economic inequalities in care. To stimulate and facilitate such research, our aims are to outline theoretical arguments for the differential impact of LTC policies on socio-economic inequalities in care and to create macro-level indicators for different types of supportive LTC policies in European countries over time. Our study’s research question is: Can we find and capture different dimensions of LTC policies in macro-level indicators that are comparable over countries and time' In particular, we focus on supported familialism (for example, informal caregiver support), supported defamilialization through the market (for example, in-cash benefits for care users), and defamilialization through public provision (for example, availability of beds in residential care). Besides a summary of the literature on LTC policies and how they may affect socio-economic inequalities in care, we outline our search process for macro-level LTC indicators and present descriptive information on the different types of LTC policies and their correlations. We discuss the difficulties that arise when translating theoretical insights about different types of LTC policies into high-quality measures for many countries and time points. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-08-04T03:53:29Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221115669
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Authors:Patricia Frericks, Martin Gurín First page: 52 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Redistribution is one of the main characteristics of the welfare state, and welfare state research has dealt intensely with various facets of it. The main focus in analysing redistribution is on the redistributive logics of welfare states in terms of work-related rights. Family as a major principle of welfare state redistribution, though, has hardly been included in these welfare state analyses. It has mainly been addressed by analysing outcome data or by analysing care as the most relevant characteristic of the family. We argue, though, that comparative welfare state analysis that addresses differences in welfare state intended redistribution needs to also include family as a redistributive principle to gain a more complete picture of societal redistribution. In this study, we are analysing the redistributive logics of welfare states in terms of family. We answer the question of how and in how far welfare states institutionalize family as a redistributive principle. We examine by means of the tax–benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD and its Hypothetical Household Tool (HHoT) welfare state regulations on family for three countries that are generally classed as different regime types. We differentiate between a great variety of family forms (referring to marital status, children and different forms of couples’ income distribution) to adequately test our theoretical assumptions. The findings show that family is a major redistributive principle of the welfare states analysed here and applied in different redistributive logics to the various family forms. This, then, results in an increase in income for certain family forms and a decrease in income for other family forms. These differences are not the result of one coherent set of regulations, but of an interplay of in part contradictory regulations that reflect a great variety of family-related redistributive logics within the single countries. Thus our study provides new insights into the redistributive logics of welfare states, and may contribute to the analysis of welfare state complexity in terms of theory, methodology and empirics. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-08-04T03:29:54Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221115670
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Authors:Sergey Malinovskiy, Ekaterina Shibanova First page: 67 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Higher education has generally been excluded from the welfare discourse, especially in transition countries. This article addresses existing research gaps by applying the ideas of decommodification and stratification to higher education in post-Soviet countries, within the comparative framework of welfare regime typology. The purpose of this study is to analyse the extent to which higher education relates to welfare state models in such countries. The research demonstrates that institutional settings and outcomes of higher education provision in Estonia, Georgia and Russia are evolving toward patterns of social-democratic, liberal and conservative models, respectively. Although the correspondence is incomplete, we argue that post-Soviet states are more similar to groups of countries representing these welfare regimes than to each other. This study argues against the assumption of a uniform post-Soviet pattern of higher education policy and shows that its structuring is embedded in the wider context of national welfare state models. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-06-02T02:57:17Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221101344
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Authors:Juliana Chueri First page: 84 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Literature posits that mainstream right-wing parties have adopted restrictive positions on immigrants’ entitlements to social rights to avoid losing votes to populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs). Although studies recognize that this co-option is only partial, we know little about the remaining differences between PRRPs’ and mainstream right-wing parties’ welfare chauvinism strategies. This article fills this knowledge gap by comparing how mainstream and populist right-wing governments approach different migrant groups’ entitlements to social rights. The article combines an event history analysis of the Determinants of International Migration Policy database with a qualitative examination of the indexation of family benefits in selected European Countries to compare PRRPs’ and mainstream parties’ impact on the social rights of different migrant groups. The results reveal that the main difference between PRRPs and mainstream right-wing parties in Western Europe is the formers’ support for restrictions on intra-EU migrants’ entitlements to social benefits. This finding has important implications for the study of the European social policy agenda, as PRRPs’ increasing politicization of intra-EU migrants’ access to social rights may compromise the future of intra-European solidarity. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-10-04T05:29:45Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221128441
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Authors:Giovanni Gallo, Michele Raitano First page: 101 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Using a static microsimulation model based on a link between survey and administrative data, this article investigates the effects of the pandemic on income distribution in Italy in 2020. The analysis focuses on both individuals and households by simulating through nowcasting techniques changes in labour income and in equivalized income, respectively. For both units of observations, we compare changes before and after social policy interventions, that is, automatic stabilizers and benefits introduced by the government to address the effects of the COVID-19 emergency. We find that the pandemic has led to a relatively greater drop in labour income for those lying in the poorest quantiles, which, however, benefited more from the income support benefits. As a result, compared with the ‘No-COVID scenario’, income poverty and inequality indices grow considerably when these benefits are not considered, whereas the poverty increase greatly narrows and inequality slightly decreases once social policy interventions are taken into account. This evidence signals the crucial role played by cash social transfers to contrast with the most serious economic consequences of the pandemic. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-08-04T06:52:40Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221115672
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Authors:Dries Lens, Ive Marx, Jarmila Oslejová, Ninke Mussche First page: 117 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Seen as an alternative to precarious, informal work or no job at all, several European countries have started to use tax money to boost the demand for domestic services. This article asks whether this makes sense. We consider the case of the heavily subsidized and highly popular service voucher scheme in Belgium. Close to a quarter of households there employ domestic service workers under the scheme, making it in relative terms the largest scheme of its kind in Europe. The workers employed under the scheme enjoy extensive labour and social security rights. Does the service voucher scheme provide a model to be followed if we care about labour market exclusion and precariousness or is this a case of institutionalized second-tier work' To that end we trace workers’ labour market pathways over a considerable length of time. We find that a substantial share of women find a way out of vulnerable labour market situations through the scheme. However, a very significant number enter from steady employment. This is clearly at odds with the original objective of offering a stepping stone to women with a precarious labour market position. The scheme also plays an ambivalent role in the labour market integration process of immigrant newcomers. At least in part, the Belgian scheme can be seen as a case of policy overshooting. We suggest some potential improvements. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-10-01T10:48:06Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221128440
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Authors:Emanuele Ferragina, Christopher Deeming First page: 132 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This article maps the development and uses of the comparative method in academic research since the 1970s. It is based on an original database that we constructed for our review of 12,483 articles extracted from leading journals representing the disciplines of Social Policy, Political Science and Sociology. We proceed to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the reported comparative research effort. We find that the comparative method became mainstream in the 1990s – following the publication of the Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism and that JESP is the most comparative journal of all. In 2020, 66% of articles published in JESP are comparative. The comparative turn has been stronger in Social Policy than Sociology and Political Science over the last three decades. We witness a rise in the use of formal techniques (case studies and comparative historical analysis, SEM/factorial techniques, cluster analysis, QCA/Fuzzy-set) and mixed-methods in comparison to descriptive analysis, and this is particularly pronounced in Sociology. Regression analysis is dominant, however the most cited comparative articles are based on case studies and descriptive statistics. Overall, we argue that the comparative method is, in essence, ‘a way of thinking’ and not simply the application of a set of disparate techniques. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-10-25T05:47:01Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221128438
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