Comparative Analyses of Child and Youth Services in Europe

This paper contains a comparative evaluation of the reactions of welfare states to the isomorphic pressures emanating from the European Union based on two case studies taken from the Child and Youth Welfare System. In the European Community different concepts of welfare policy exist. In the unification process every member state has to find answers to the pressure of assimilation invoked by the legislation. The objective of this explorative study is to show that countries can learn from each other in order to improve their own system of social services.

Rationalities, Practices, and Resistance in Post-Welfarism. A Comment on Kevin Stenson

The former welfare arrangements are, according to Stenson, in a process of fundamental re-structuring. Or regarding the topic of this SW&S-Special Issue (was meint ihr genau mit dem vorhergehenden Satz? Man sollte einen Satz besser nicht mit ‘or’ anfangen): the spatial scales of the welfare states are under siege. With this advice Stenson assents to the prevalent description of a fundamental shift of former welfare arrangements since the last third of the 20th century (see for welfare policy research, research on human services and social work: Castel 2003; Clarke 2004; Gilbert 2004; Lessenich 2008/forthcoming; Marston/McDonald 2006; Webb 2006).

Extending working life in Finland. CEPS Working Document No. 387, 22 November 2013

This report reviews national and private initiatives to allow the elderly to continue their participation in the Finnish labour market and provides an analysis of the labour market and living conditions of seniors. We are interested in how those over 50 can be engaged in various forms of employment and lifelong learning. We find strong evidence that Finland generally provides good institutional conditions for active ageing. The quick and early ageing process was tackled by the fundamental pension reform that already prolonged retirement substantially and will probably facilitate later retirement as the attitudes concerning retirement change. On the other hand, Finland still seems to lag behind the other Nordic welfare states, has considerable problems in providing the same health conditions to low educated people in physically demanding occupations and could - – with respect to family pension in particular – invest further efforts in reforming the pension system. While many of the reforms Finland has conducted seem to be favourable and transferable to other European countries that still face the steepest phases of ageing in their societies, a reluctance towards changing attitudes that we observe in Finland, shows that organizing active ageing is a long-term project.

The growth challenge for Europe and the EMU. CHALLENGE EUROPE Issue 22- Challenges and new beginnings: Priorities for the EU's new leadership, September 2014.

The European economy is slowly and painfully striving to reemerge from the last six years of crisis. It was a crisis of enormous intensity and contagiousness, given the unprecedented depth of global financial integration combined with the systemic flaws in the EMU architecture. And it is not over, as the high levels of unemployment and the growing divergence between Member States testify. The threat of fragmentation is imminent as ever: fragmentation between euro-ins and euro-outs; fragmentation between North and South; fragmentation within societies, with increasing income inequality and a growing number of, what used to be, the middle class population slipping through the social safety net and below poverty lines. Policies of front-loaded fiscal consolidation have left welfare states in economically weaker countries severely underfunded. According to OECD data, the number of people living in households without any income from work has doubled in Greece, Ireland and Spain, and has risen by 20% or more in Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, and Slovenia. Fertility rates have dropped further since the crisis, deepening the demographic and fiscal challenges of ageing. There are long-term implications from these deteriorating trends, regarding people's long-term health, education and upward mobility from low-income families. It is also highly likely that many of the people unemployed for a long period of time will never again be able to gain proper access to the job market and build a normal career track. The enduring effects of the crisis risk creating vicious cycles of low growth, high debt levels, austerity, declining productivity, and stagnation. These developments carry heavy implications for the future growth prospects of the European economies, for future prosperity, and for the sustainability of pension systems and welfare states. They must be urgently reversed.

Waged domestic work in Argentina: the regulation of care provision

This paper addresses the condition of domestic work in Argentina, in a perspective that draws from the literature on care work. In this approach, domestic work can be interpreted as one of the mercantile forms in which care work is socially organized, due to the persistence of the traditional sexual division of labor and the weakness of public policies. From these considerations, I develop a quantitative study on the levels of informality, precarity, and wage inequality that characterize domestic work in that country. Thereafter, I discuss the main measures adopted by the Argentine government since 2003, with the goal of reducing legal discrimination of domestic workers and promoting their formalization. On this basis, the paper highlights the advances in the recognition of domestic workers’ labor rights, while emphasizing how social and cultural restraints still permeate labor relations in this sector.

Discourse on equality in organizations. A case study of the chemical industry in Tarragona

This paper presents a proposal for analyzing discourses on gender equality in organizations. The research is carried out as a case study, focusing on the chemical industry in Tarragona. To the question: why there are still so many differences between women and men in labour market, despite having multiple tools to avoid inequalities? we propose to focus on discourses of equality to find an answer. The viewpoint that companies have on gender is crucial in enabling policies for equality. To ensure that policies are truly aimed at promoting equality, it is needed a gender approach that nowadays is not widespread in organizations. From these considerations, we present a fourfold typology of discourses on equality in organizations.

Time beyond clock: time use-surveys revisited

Time use surveys -despite having represented a turning point in the study of inequalities between women and men- continue hiding care times and subtracting relevance to the qualitative dimensions of time. This due both, to the ideological conception that lies behind this type of studies that consider more relevant market process as to surveys methodology. This article analyzes the theoretical model that lies behind time use surveys and, consequently, the study of the conceptual aspects, the methodology and the potential of these surveys as an analytical instrument. The aim is to unraveling the limitations presented by the surveys to take in account the subjective dimensions of time related to the wellbeing of  people.

The Worsening of the employment and work conditions and its relationship to the self-perceived health in European working population. Relevance and effects of the latest socioeconomic crisis

The recent crisis of the capitalistic economic system has altered the working conditions and occupations in the European Union. The recession situation has accelerated trends and has brought transformations that have been observed before. Changes have not looked the same way in all the countries of the Union. The social occupation norms, labour relations models and the type of global welfare provision can help underline some of these inequalities. Poor working conditions can expose workers to situations of great risk. This is one of the basic assumptions of the theoretical models and analytical studies of the approach to the psychosocial work environment. Changes in working conditions of the population seems to be important to explain in the worst health states. To observe these features in the current period of economic recession it has made a comparative study of trend through the possibilities of the European Working Conditions Survey in the 2005 and 2010 editions. It has also set different multivariate logistic regression models to explore potential partnerships with the worst conditions of employment and work. It seems that the economic crisis has intensified changes in working conditions and highlighted the effects of those conditions on the poor health of the working population. This conclusion can’t be extended for all EU countries; some differences were observed in terms of global welfare models.

A two-step approach for the analysis of hybrids in comparative social policy analysis: a nuanced typology of childcare policies

Typologies have represented an important tool for the development of comparative social policy research and continue to be widely used in spite of growing criticism of their ability to capture the complexity of welfare states and their internal heterogeneity. In particular, debates have focused on the presence of hybrid cases and the existence of distinct cross-national pattern of variation across areas of social policy. There is growing awareness around these issues, but empirical research often still relies on methodologies aimed at classifying countries in a limited number of unambiguous types. This article proposes a two-step approach based on fuzzy-set-ideal-type analysis for the systematic analysis of hybrids at the level of both policies (step 1) and policy configurations or combinations of policies (step 2). This approach is demonstrated by using the case of childcare policies in European economies. In the first step, parental leave policies are analysed using three methods – direct, indirect, and combinatory – to identify and describe specific hybrid forms at the level of policy analysis. In the second step, the analysis focus on the relationship between parental leave and childcare services in order to develop an overall typology of childcare policies, which clearly shows that many countries display characteristics normally associated with different types (hybrids and. Therefore, this two-step approach enhances our ability to account and make sense of hybrid welfare forms produced from tensions and contradictions within and between policies.

Social Trust and Demand for Redistribution. Is There a Crowding out Effect?

The debate about the relationship between social capital the welfare state has produced contradictory results for a long time. The crowding out hypothesis states that the growth of the welfare state would erode social capital, as the action of the state leave no room for non-regulated spontaneous cooperation. In sharp contrast, the crowding in hypothesis states that there is virtuous circle between the size of the welfare state and the stock of social capital in a particular country, since generous welfare states (specially those relying on universalistic programs) will produce a particular sense of fairness and solidarity toward fellow citizens. Yet, the empirical evidence testing the explanatory power of these theories is mostly inconclusive. To further our knowledge of this puzzle, in this paper I focus specifically on the relationship between social trust and preferences for redistribution at the individual level in a sample of European countries belonging to different welfare state regimes.

Réconcilier universalisme et ciblage : l’évolution du paradoxe de la redistribution depuis la fin des années 1980

Le Paradoxe de la redistribution de Walter Korpi et Joakim Palme (1998) postule que les États-providences qui ont des dépenses sociales moins ciblées redistribuent davantage. Ive Marx, Lina Salanauskaite et Gerlinde Verbist (2013) ont toutefois constaté que le paradoxe démontré grâce à une corrélation entre un indice de redistribution et un indice de ciblage des dépenses sociales n'était plus valide dans les années 2000. En reproduisant les corrélations, il apparaît que l'augmentation importante du ciblage dans des pays qui redistribuent beaucoup comme le Danemark et la Suède est la principale cause de la disparition de la corrélation entre redistribution et ciblage. Lors des crises économiques dans les années 1980 et 1990, les prestations maximales déjà relativement faibles ainsi que la volonté de maintenir les prestations minimums et les taux de remplacement de la part des partis sociaux-démocrates ont poussé les gouvernements danois et suédois à réduire les prestations maximales afin de limiter l’augmentation des dépenses, augmentant ainsi le ciblage des dépenses sociales tout en préservant le caractère universel des programmes. L’augmentation du ciblage des dépenses sociales n’a pas eu d’effets négatifs sur la redistribution particulièrement au Danemark où la redistribution a augmenté et les inégalités diminué entre la fin des années 80 et le milieu des années 2000.

Réconcilier universalisme et ciblage : l’évolution du paradoxe de la redistribution depuis la fin des années 1980

Le Paradoxe de la redistribution de Walter Korpi et Joakim Palme (1998) postule que les États-providences qui ont des dépenses sociales moins ciblées redistribuent davantage. Ive Marx, Lina Salanauskaite et Gerlinde Verbist (2013) ont toutefois constaté que le paradoxe démontré grâce à une corrélation entre un indice de redistribution et un indice de ciblage des dépenses sociales n'était plus valide dans les années 2000. En reproduisant les corrélations, il apparaît que l'augmentation importante du ciblage dans des pays qui redistribuent beaucoup comme le Danemark et la Suède est la principale cause de la disparition de la corrélation entre redistribution et ciblage. Lors des crises économiques dans les années 1980 et 1990, les prestations maximales déjà relativement faibles ainsi que la volonté de maintenir les prestations minimums et les taux de remplacement de la part des partis sociaux-démocrates ont poussé les gouvernements danois et suédois à réduire les prestations maximales afin de limiter l’augmentation des dépenses, augmentant ainsi le ciblage des dépenses sociales tout en préservant le caractère universel des programmes. L’augmentation du ciblage des dépenses sociales n’a pas eu d’effets négatifs sur la redistribution particulièrement au Danemark où la redistribution a augmenté et les inégalités diminué entre la fin des années 80 et le milieu des années 2000.

How does globalization affect the tax burden on labour income, capital income and consumption in different welfare regimes? The case of Western and Eastern EU Member States

This article analyzes the effects of globalization on implicit tax rates (ITRs) on labor income, capital income, and consumption in the EU15 and Central and Eastern European New Member States (CEE NMS). We find supportive evidence for an increase in the ITR on labor income in the EU15, but no effect on the ITR on capital income. There is evidence of convergence in terms of the ITR on consumption, as countries with higher than average ITR on consumption respond to globalization by decreasing their tax rates. There are important differences among the welfare regimes within the EU15. Social-democratic countries have decreased the tax burden on capital, but increased that on labor due to globalization. Globalization exerts a pressure to increase taxes on labor income in the conservative and liberal regimes as well. Taxes on consumption decrease in response to globalization in the conservative and social-democratic regimes. In the CEE NMS, there is no effect of globalization on the ITR on labor and capital income, but we find a negative impact on the ITR on consumption in the CEE NMS with higher than average ITR on consumption. (JEL H23, H24, H25, F19, F21)