Factors and directions of revision of the French social paradigm

Historically, France is home to a number of concepts and practices for the creation of the welfare state (État providence). The state social policy is organically woven into the economic mechanism of this country and, it seemed, is its integral part. The purpose of the article is to identify the main directions of the revision of the social French paradigm. The generalization of the bibliography, historical and statistical analysis made it possible to identify a number of factors of such a revision, including the processes of transnationalization of French business, the scaling of trade, and the crisis of the post-industrial phase of global capitalism. The conclusion is substantiated that the shocks of the 2019 pandemic at the beginning of 2021 accelerated the evolution of French social policy in favor of the communitarian level due to the limited opportunities for social reforms at the country level. The antithesis of the initiatives of Emmanuel Macron is the growth of nationalist sentiments and ideas of Charles de Gaulle against the background of the crisis of convergence of the economies of the member countries.

Welfare Sanctions and Deprivation in Germany: Do First Sanctions Lead to Higher Levels of Deprivation Among the Long-Term Unemployed and Recipients of Basic Income Support?

In Germany, as in many other European countries, vast changes in the welfare regime – towards workfare – have taken place. As a central activating element of workfare, sanctions were introduced to take effect by temporarily increasing deprivation through benefit cuts. This paper provides first quantitative insights on the effect of first sanctions on deprivation and contributes to the recent debate on the (un)constitutionality of sanctions, which re-emerged after a verdict of the Federal Constitutional Court, criticizing the lack of knowledge about the effects of sanctions on those affected. We implement a difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach that addresses selection on observables and individual time constant unobserved differences. High data accuracy is ensured by combining the “Panel Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS) with administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency. The results illustrate a slightly higher yet statistically insignificant level of deprivation for first-sanctioned unemployment/basic income recipients compared to non-sanctioned recipients. The results hint in the direction that higher levels of deprivation are not what activates the sanctioned beneficiaries to reintegrate into the labour market. We discuss whether the results imply a significant deviation from the socio-cultural subsistence minimum of sanctioned recipients and a failure of the welfare state.

Improving Take-Up by Reaching Out to Potential Beneficiaries. Insights from a Large-Scale Field Experiment in Belgium

Non-take-up of means-tested benefits is a widespread phenomenon which undermines the effectiveness and fairness of social policies. The digitalisation of the welfare state creates new opportunities for proactively contacting people who are potentially entitled to benefits, but do not take up their social rights. In this study, we report on how new data flows were used to reach out to potential beneficiaries of the Increased Reimbursement of health care, a programme targeted at low-income households in Belgium. By randomizing the period in which potential beneficiaries were contacted, we were able to identify a three- to four-fold increase in take-up among those contacted as a result of the outreaching activities. Households that did not respond to the intervention, the never takers, have lower pre-intervention healthcare expenditures. This suggests that non-take-up was reduced primarily among those who would expect to benefit most from receiving the Increased Reimbursement. Exploiting the combination of rich administrative data with experimental evidence, we also find that early responders are mostly older and have higher historic health expenditures than late responders. Furthermore, results point to the need for balancing well the inclusiveness of the intervention with an increased number of applications by ineligible people.

Die kulturellen Grundlagen des Sozialstaats und ihre Bedeutung für die Verwirklichung des Verfassungsprinzips

While the Basic Law, in a departure from the Weimar Constitution, does not recognize any basic social rights, but only the welfare state principle, the opposite is true in South Korea. However, this difference loses significance at the level of interpretation, since the various basic social rights in South Korea are formed into a general welfare state principle. This paper attempts to compare the welfare state in South Korea and Germany. The reasons for the considerable differences that nevertheless exist between the two legal systems with respect to the welfare state are elaborated.