Gender and attitudes toward welfare state reform: Are women really social investment promoters?

2021 ◽  
pp. 095892872097801
Author(s):  
Julian L. Garritzmann ◽  
Hanna Schwander
Keyword(s):  
Demand Side ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Career Interruptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analytical Step ◽  
Political Realignment ◽  
Welfare Politics ◽  
Welfare State Reform

This article contributes to the study of the demand side of welfare politics by investigating gender differences in social investment preferences systematically. Building on the different functions of social investment policies in creating, preserving, or mobilizing skills, we argue that women do not support social investment policies generally more strongly than men. Rather, women demand, in particular, policies to preserve their skills during career interruptions and help to mobilize their skills on the labour market. In a second analytical step, we examine women’s policy priorities if skill preservation and mobilization come at the expense of social compensation. We test our arguments for eight Western European countries with data from the INVEDUC survey. The confirmation of our arguments challenges a core assumption of the literatures on the social investment turn and women’s political realignment. We discuss the implication of our findings in the conclusion.

From perspectives to policy contingencies: Conditional cash transfers as social investments

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moira Nelson ◽  
Johan Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Conditional Cash Transfers ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
The Social

Despite the popularity of social investment, there remain ambiguities regarding how to design an effective social investment approach. We review evaluations of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Latin America in order to draw out lessons of how to improve the effectiveness of social investment. CCTs share many of the objectives of the social investment approach and are targeted at poorer groups. Since research shows that such groups are often not adequately supported through social investment policies, analyzing CCTs holds particular promise. Our analysis finds that architects of social investment policies should consider three questions when designing a social investment approach: how much investment is necessary to fulfill social investment functions, what is the causal mechanism through which the goals of social investment are to be achieved, and what array of policies are necessary for such mechanisms to be effective?

Social Investment

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-205
Author(s):  
Julian L. Garritzmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Skills

This chapter reviews the paradigm and spread of social investment policies, which come in many variants, and discusses them as key elements of the ‘knowledge economy welfare state’. Social investments are policies that aim to create, preserve, and mobilize human skills and capabilities. The chapter discusses the emergence of social investment as a new social policy paradigm, presents different variants of the social investment approach, provides a mapping of social investment policies around the globe, discusses effects of social investment policies, and weighs in on important debates regarding the politics of social investment. The chapter then closes with an outlook on avenues for future research.

scholarly journals Real but Unequal Representation in Welfare State Reform

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter Schakel ◽  
Brian Burgoon ◽  
Armen Hakhverdian
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
State Reform ◽  
Industrialized Democracies ◽  
Welfare Generosity ◽  
Citizen Preferences ◽  
Welfare Politics ◽  
Actual Policy ◽  
Welfare State Reform

Scholars have long debated whether welfare policymaking in industrialized democracies is responsive to citizen preferences and whether such policymaking is more responsive to rich than to poor citizens. Debate has been hampered, however, by difficulties in matching data on attitudes toward particular policies to data on changes in the generosity of actual policies. This article uses better, more targeted measures of policy change that allow more valid exploration of responsiveness for a significant range of democracies. It does so by linking multicountry and multiwave survey data on attitudes toward health, pension, and unemployment policies and data on actual policy generosity, not just spending, in these domains. The analysis reveals that attitudes correlate strongly with subsequent changes in welfare generosity in the three policy areas and that such responsiveness is much stronger for richer than for poorer citizens. Representation is likely real but also vastly unequal in the welfare politics of industrialized democracies.

When voters favour the social investment welfare state

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 194-205
Author(s):  
Marc Brazzill ◽  
Hideko Magara ◽  
Yuki Yanai
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
High Productivity ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
The Social

AbstractWe investigate when voters favour social investment. Welfare states have transformed their core policies as a result of low economic growth and fiscal pressures. The social investment strategy, such as broader education provision and promotion of women's employment, aims at shifting the economy from the traditional Keynesian welfare state to the high-productivity economy by encouraging long-term and inclusive human capital formation. Social investment is popular among citizens in many developed economies, especially in the EU where governments promote social investment as part of their welfare policy packages. However, in Japan, the term ‘social investment’ is rarely used in policy discussions. Consequently, we ask what levels of voter support social investment policies have in such an environment; which voter characteristics are associated with social investment support; and whether voter support for social investment differs when placed in a broader policy context. To answer these questions, we conducted an online survey with a conjoint experiment. Our data analysis shows that social investment policies are popular among Japanese people, despite a lack of familiarity with the concept of social investment. We find that social libertarians and female respondents are more likely than social authoritarians and male respondents to support social investment. In addition, there is some evidence that higher income voters are favourable to social investment policies. Furthermore, voter support for social investment depends on the policy context. Support becomes weaker when social investment policies are presented in combination with decreasing levels of social security spending. Our results highlight what kinds of social investment policies could be achieved without damaging electoral fortunes.

Social Investment at Crossroads

2018 ◽  
pp. 201-220
Author(s):  
Axel Cronert ◽  
Joakim Palme
Keyword(s):  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Wage Structure ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
Noticeable Increase ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Distributional Consequences

The concept of social investment has gained ground among European Union policymakers as a strategy to reconcile the goals of employment, growth, and social inclusion. However, scholars have criticized the social investment approach for not achieving its intended distributional consequences and have questioned the complementarity between the goals of increasing employment and decreasing poverty. We argue that distinguishing between the “Enlightened Path”—more commonly known as the “Nordic approach”—and the “Third Way” approach to social investment is important for understanding the relationships between social investment policies, employment, and poverty. By critically examining policy developments in Sweden, we find that the recent noticeable increase in relative poverty can best be accounted for by changes in tax and transfer policies that represent a shift from the Nordic approach to the Third Way approach, whereas an “employment vs. poverty” trade-off is mitigated by the sustained presence of a compressed wage structure.

Social Investment and Poverty Reduction: A Comparative Analysis across Fifteen European Countries

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 611-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
OLAF VAN VLIET ◽  
CHEN WANG
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Detrimental Effect ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Investment Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Employment Rates ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractDespite the fact that employment rates have increased in many European countries since the beginning of the 2000s, poverty rates have stagnated and in some countries even increased. In the welfare state literature, it has been argued that these disappointing poverty trends may be partly attributable to the reforming of traditional welfare state programmes into social investment policies, because the latter are less redistributive. To date, there are only a few systematic comparative empirical analyses which focus on the outcomes of social investment policies. This paper contributes to the social investment literature by empirically analysing the distributional effects of shifts from traditional welfare state arrangements to social investment policies in fifteen European countries for the period 1997–2007. Our results suggest that the detrimental effect of social investment policies, described in some specific cases in the literature, cannot be generalised across a larger group of European countries. However, for European countries other than the Nordic countries, the results provide some evidence for a linkage between stagnating or increasing poverty trends and shifts in expenditures to new welfare state programmes.

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