Trade-off between formal and informal care in Spain

The remarkable growth of older population has moved long term care to the front ranks of the social policy agenda. Understanding the factors that determine the type and amount of formal care is important for predicting use in the future and developing long-term policy. In this context we jointly analyze the choice of care (formal, informal, both together or none) as well as the number of hours of care received. Given that the number of hours of care is not independent of the type of care received, we estimate, for the first time in this area of research, a sample selection model with the particularity that the first step is a multinomial logit model. With regard to the debate about complementarity or substitutability between formal and informal care, our results indicate that formal care acts as a reinforcement of the family care in certain cases: for very old care receivers, in those cases in which the individual has multiple disabilities, when many care hours are provided, and in case of mental illness and/or dementia. There exist substantial differences in long term care addressed to younger and older dependent people and dependent women are in risk of becoming more vulnerable to the shortage of informal caregivers in the future. Finally, we have documented that there are great disparities in the availability of public social care across regions.

Consideraciones educativas de la perspectiva ecológica de Urie Bronferbrenner

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar las bases teóricas y algunas aplicaciones contemporáneas de la teoría de Urie Bronfenbrenner. En primer lugar, se describe su biografía. Posteriormente, se explica su teoría ecología, su modelo “Proceso-Persona-Contexto-Tiempo” (PPCT) y su reciente aproximación bioecológica. A continuación, exponemos algunas consideraciones educativas de su teoría. Más específicamente, destacamos seis temas basados en algunas ideas de Bronfenbrenner: 1) la relación entre política social y ciencia, 2) la creación de contextos de desarrollo primarios y secundarios, 3) la implicación afectiva, 4) el currículo centrado en el cuidado o la atención de las personas, 5) la intervención comunitaria, y 6) el establecimiento de continuidades entre microsistemas (noción de “mesosistema”). Finalmente, revisamos algunas aportaciones contemporáneas en psicología y ciencias de la educación basadas en la perspectiva de Bronfenbrenner

Une européanisation des politiques de conciliation de la vie familiale et professionnelle? : les cas de l'Italie et de la France

Les différents pays membres de l'UE connaissent des politiques dites de « conciliation de la vie professionnelle et familiale » qui correspondent à un ensemble de dispositifs hétéroclites, plus ou moins complexes, mais rarement cohérents. Alliant des objectifs tels que la hausse de la natalité, la protection des mères et des enfants, l'égalité entre femmes et hommes, la lutte contre la pauvreté des enfants et des familles monoparentales et l'activation des femmes, ces politiques sont fortement ancrées dans des traditions nationales de politiques familiales, d'emploi et fiscales. Ces politiques portent en elles l'héritage et les tensions de l'histoire d'un pays. Au moment où un nouvel acteur international, l'Union européenne, intervient de manière de plus en plus explicite dans le débat et dans la définition de ces politiques, la présente étude tend à analyser l'influence exercées par les référentiels européens en matière de politiques de conciliation sur les discours et politiques nationales de l'Italie et de la France. A partir d'une analyse cognitive du processus d'européanisation, nous montrons que les référentiels développés au sein de l'UE, par leur caractère abstrait et flou, n'ont eu jusqu'ici qu'une faible influence sur les discours et politiques en Italie et en France. Croisant une perspective néo-institutionnaliste historique et discursive, notre recherche a été construite autour de deux axes de réflexion. Premièrement, il a été question d'analyser, d'une part, l'évolution du discours tenu par les différentes instances européennes (notamment de la Commission européenne, le Conseil européen et le Fonds Social européen) et, d'autre part, questionner comment un consensus a pu émerger entre des pays et des acteurs qui ont des traditions extrêmement différentes en matière de politique sociale, de politique familiale et de convention de genre. Deuxièmement, il a été question d'analyser si et comment un cadre de référence conçu au niveau communautaire a pu influencer les discours et politiques au niveau national. - The reconciliation of work and family life policies forms, in the EU's member States, a plurality of politics, more or less complex, but rarely coherent. Combining different objectives such as fertility increase, mothers and children protection, equality between men and women, fight against children and lone-parent families poverty and women activation, these policies are part of the national traditions of family, employment and tax policy and bear the heritage and the tensions of the country history. At a moment when a new global player, the European Union, interferes increasingly explicitly in the debate and the definition of reconciling work and family life policies, the question at the heart of this thesis was to define what kind of influence the référentiels of European discourses have on reconciliation policies since the late 1990s, in the Italian and French discourses and policies. Starting from a cognitive analysis of the Europeanization process, we show that the référentiels developed within the EU, by their abstract and vague nature, have had little influence in Italy and France. Crossing an historical and a discursive neo-institutionalist perspective, our research was based on two axes of reasoning. First, we have analysed, on the one hand, the evolution of various European institutions' discoursed (including the European Commission, the European Council and the European Social Fund) and, on the other hand, we have questioned how a consensus has emerged between countries and actors who have very different traditions in social policy, family policy and gender conventions. Secondly, we have observed if and how a framework developed at Community level, as a kind of ideal to strive for, has influenced discourses and policies at the national level.

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Integration of social and employment policies has been a highly topical issue over past decades in Europe. Faced with the complex task of facilitating the return to employment of jobless people with multiple barriers to work, several countries have developed integrated structures for delivering labour market and social support.'One stop-shops','integrated jobcenters' and 'interagency collaboration'are some of the tools that are being developed in this context (Askim et al, 2011).

Who Cares? A comparison of informal and formal care provision in Spain, England and the USA

This paper investigates the prevalence of incapacity in performing daily activities and the associations between household composition and availability of family members and receipt of care among older adults with functioning problems in Spain, England and the United States of America (USA). We examine how living arrangements, marital status, child availability, limitations in functioning ability, age and gender affect the probability of receiving formal care and informal care from household members and from others in three countries with different family structures, living arrangements and policies supporting care of the incapacitated. Data sources include the 2006 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for Spain, the third wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (2006), and the eighth wave of the USA Health and Retirement Study (2006). Logistic and multinomial logistic regressions are used to estimate the probability of receiving care and the sources of care among persons age 50 and older. The percentage of people with functional limitations receiving care is higher in Spain. More care comes from outside the household in the USA and England than in Spain. The use of formal care among the incapacitated is lowest in the USA and highest in Spain.

Sosiaaliset oikeudet ja sosiaalipolitiikka: T. H. Marshallin näkökulma hyvinvointivaltioon

Abstract: Social rights and social policy: T. H. Marshall's view to the welfarestate

Welfare regimes and change in the employment structure: Britain, Denmark and Germany since 1990

Welfare states are often reduced to their role as providers of social protection and redistribution. In 1990, Esping-Andersen argued that they also affect employment creation and the class structure. We analyse the stratification outcomes for three welfare regimes - Britain, Germany and Denmark - over the 1990s and 2000s. Based on individual-level surveys, we observe a disproportionate increase among professionals and managers, and a decline among production workers and clerks. The result is clear-cut occupational upgrading in Denmark and Germany. In Britain, high and low-end service jobs expanded, resulting in a polarized version of upgrading. Growth in low-end service jobs - and thus polarization - is no precondition for full employment. Both Britain and Denmark halved their low-educated unemployment rate between 1995 and 2008. Yet low-end service jobs expanded only in Britain, not in Denmark. The cause is the evolution of labour supply: rising educational attainment means that fewer low-educated workers look for low-skilled jobs.

La construcción de la imagen de la política en los noticiarios televisivos en España. Exo- y endo- equilibrios de la calidad de la información política

En nuestra sociedad la imagen que los ciudadanos tenemos de la política está fuertemente condicionada por cómo esta aparece en los medios de comunicación y, en particular, en los noticiarios televisivos. Este artículo, fruto de un proyecto de investigación I+D+I financiado por el Ministerio de Educación, Política Social y Deporte, analiza las noticias de temática política de ocho canales de televisión en España con el objetivo de comprobar cuál es la presencia de la política en los noticiarios, qué imagen se construye de la política en ellos. Además, propone una nueva metodología para establecer la calidad de las informaciones políticas en los noticiarios televisivos en España a través de la definición de los endo- y exo- equilibrios de los contenidos políticos de los noticiarios. Las principales conclusiones del artículo son que los noticiarios que construyen una imagen más equilibrada de la política son los de Televisión Española y Cuatro, mientras que los que construyen una imagen más desequilibrada son los de la Sexta y Canal 9. El porcentaje de noticias dedicadas a la política no depende ni de la titularidad (pública-privada), ni del ámbito de cobertura (estatal-autonómica) del canal. En cambio, sí podemos encontrar una relación en la suma de las noticias de política (political issues) y las de gobernanza (policy issues).

Alleviating Working Poverty in Postindustrial Economies

In order to identify the main social policy tools that can efficiently combat working poverty, it is essential to identify its main driving factors. More importantly, this work shows that all poverty factors identified in the literature have a direct bearing on working households through three mechanisms, namely being badly paid, having a below-average workforce participation, and high needs. One of the main purposes of this work is to assess whether the policies put forward in the specialist literature as potentially efficient really work. This is done in two ways. A first empirical prong provides an evaluation of the employment and antipoverty effects of these instruments, based on a meta-analysis of four instruments: minimum wages, tax credits for working households, family cash benefits and childcare policies. The second prong relies on a broader framework based on welfare regimes. This work contributes to the identification of a typology of welfare regimes that is suitable for the analysis of working poverty, and four countries are chosen to exemplify each regime: the US, Sweden, Germany, and Spain. It then moves on to show that the weight of the three working poverty mechanisms varies widely from one welfare regime to the other. This second empirical contribution clearly shows that there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to the fight against working poverty. But none of this is possible without having properly defined the phenomenon. Most of the literature is characterized by a "definitional chaos" that probably does more harm than good to social policy efforts. Hence, this book provides a conceptual reflection pleading for the use of a very encompassing definition of being in work. It shows that "the working poor" is too broad a category to be used for meaningful academic or policy discussion, and that a distinction must be operated between different categories of the working poor. Failing to acknowledge this prevents the design of an efficient policy mix.

Du retraité méritant au senior actif : genèse et transformations de la figure sociale de la vieillesse en Suisse

«Crise de l'assurance-vieillesse », «déséquilibre démographique», «vieillissement de la population », « faillite des systèmes de retraite », voilà des expressions qui occupent une place prépondérante dans tes discours portant sur l'avenir de la sécurité sociale aujourd'hui. Les autorités politiques suisses comme européennes font part de leur inquiétude face à la situation d'urgence que présenteraient les « sociétés vieillissantes ». En effet, alors que F assurance-vieillesse s'adressait initialement à une catégorie résiduelle de personnes qui parvenait à vivre plusieurs années au-delà de 65 ans, elle couvre maintenant près d'un cinquième de la population globale. Partant, les autorités fédérales appellent à une restriction des conditions d'accès à la rente de vieillesse. À première vue, les débats qui portent sur cette question dans l'arène politique relèvent de considérations essentiellement techniques liées aux conditions économiques de perpétuation de l'assurances-vieillesse. Il s'agit de modifier les règles d'accès à l'assurance ainsi que le montant des prestations afin d'assainir les caisses tout en faisant face à l'augmentation du nombre de retraités. Ce travail de thèse aborde cette question par une autre approche. Nous partons du postulat que les débats portant sur l'avenir de la politique de la vieillesse sont révélateurs d'une lutte entre acteurs du champ de régulation sociale qui participent d'un travail d'élaboration d'une pensée d'Etat, au sens de P Bourdieu. Cette lutte a pour objet l'imposition de catégories de pensées, soit la définition de ce qu'est un âgé aujourd'hui et de ce qu'il est moralement acceptable d'attendre de lui Nous montrons que cette question peut être comprise à l'aune de l'histoire du traitement social de la vieillesse dont nous relatons ici la genèse et les transformations. Nous soulignons également combien cette pensée d'Etat marque la manière dont les retraités aujourd'hui cherchent à se valoriser face à la déstabilisation de leur statut social. Summary "Crisis of social insurance for older people", "demographic imbalance", "aging of the population", "bankruptcy of pensions systems" ; these are some of the many expressions that today play a importance part in discussion about the future of social security. The Swiss and European political authorities show they are concerned about the crisis that "aging societies" are said to be facing. Indeed, while social insurance for old age used to concern a residual category of people who managet! to live to more than 65 years old, it now covers about a fifth of the global population. Hence, the Federal authorities are calling for a tightening of the conditions for access to retirement benefits. At first glance, the debates in the political arena »elated to (his question mainly deal with technical considerations linked to the economic conditions for the perpetuation of the insurance for old age. Ease of access and the level of the benefits have to be reduced in order to balance the funds, in the face of the rise of the number beneficiaries. This thesis study addresses this question through a different approach. We start from the proposition that debates concerning the future of social policy for old age reveal a struggle between those involved in (he field of social regulation ; this struggle is part of the development of the thought of the State as conceived by P. Bourdieu. The aim of this fight is to impose normative categories of thought, that is to say in relation to our subject, the definition of what an older person is today and what is morally acceptable to expect of him or her. We show that this question can be understood in the light of the the history of the social treatment of old age that we report here. Moreover, we show that this thought of the State explains the way retired people seek to value themselves and confront the destabilisation of their social status.

Population Size and Civil Conflict Risk: Is There A Causal Link?

[spa] La estimación del impacto del tamaño de la populación sobre la probabilidad de conflicto civil se complica por el sesgo de endogeneidad y las variables omitidas. Este artículo trata el problema de causalidad utilizando métodos de variables instrumentales en un panel de 37 países del África Sub-sahariana en el período 1981-2004. Encontramos que un aumento de la población en un 1% aumenta la probabilidad de conflicto civil por un 5.2%.

Regeneración urbana en Chile y Cataluña. Análisis de estrategias en fases de diseño e implementación

Las ciudades evidencian procesos degenerativos y de desigualdad como resultado del ajuste político-económico a la globalización. Consecuencias de este fenómeno se observan a nivel barrial, lo que no es sólo el resultado del abandono de ciertas áreas sino, frecuentemente, es consecuencia directa o indirecta de acciones públicas. Los gobiernos están desarrollando políticas públicas y acciones para la regeneración de áreas deterioradas, con objetivos diversos, destacando la cohesión social como una prioridad. Este artículo se propone comparar y analizar las intervenciones desplegadas en Cataluña (Llei de Barris) y Chile (programa Quiero mi Barrio). Ambas iniciativas declaran basarse en enfoques integrales, por lo que resulta importante analizar la existencia de mecanismos para la coordinación e implementación de acciones transversales -sociales, físicas y/o económicas- que requieren acciones consorciadas y la inclusión de los principales actores concernidos. Una preocupación del equipo investigador es indagar en la relación entre el diseño de esas políticas y su traducción en prácticas efectivas.

Availability, Cost or Culture ? : Obstacles to Childcare Services for Low-Income Families

Recent research has highlighted the existence of a social bias in the extent to which children have access to childcare. In general, children living in higher income households are more likely to be cared for in childcare centres. While the existence of a social bias in access to childcare services has been clearly demonstrated, we currently lack a clear explanation as to why this is the case. This paper uses a unique dataset based on survey data collected specifically to study patterns of childcare use in the Swiss canton of Vaud (N = 875). The paper exploits the variation in the way childcare is organised within the canton. Childcare is a municipal policy, as a result of which there are twenty-nine different systems in operation. Fees are progressive everywhere, but variation is substantial. Availability is also very different. This peculiar institutional setup provides an ideal situation to examine the determinants of childcare use by different income groups. Our findings suggest that differences in the fees charged to low-income households, as well as the degree of progressivity of the fee structure, are significant predictors of use, while availability seems to matter less.