Religion

This chapter discusses the impact of religion on welfare state development in Europe, North America, and the Antipodes. In one perspective, religion is seen as a cultural force: the tenets of the Christian doctrines have strongly influenced the notions of social justice on which modern social policies were built. Varying ethical principles gave rise to different institutional forms of distribution, redistribution, and social protection and to different demands for social security, which ultimately translated into distinctive economic and social outcomes. In another view, religion is seen as a political force: the social and political movements of organized religion, particularly Christian democracy and Catholic organizations, have shaped programmes of social reform and influenced social policy formation and outcomes.Both perspectives have major shortcoming and this chapter therefore promotes a re-specification of the link between religion and the welfare state to refine and improve upon the existing views. The new approach highlights the interplay between socio-economic (class) and religious (state–church) cleavages on the one hand, and electoral systems (majoritarian or proportional) on the other. In majoritarian systems, pro-welfare state political coalitions are less likely to emerge than in proportional systems. This explains the huge contrast between the Anglo-Saxon lean welfare states and the more generous welfare states in Europe. However, taking into account the difference in cleavage structures and the party systems between Nordic and continental Europe, the new approach also explains why the former developed more universal and generous welfare systems than the latter.

The Welfare State as Safety Net in Migration Preferences: Empirical Evidence from an Experiment Among Dutch Master Students

The welfare state can be perceived as a safety net which helps individuals adjust to situations of risk or transition. Starting from this idea of the welfare state as safety net, this study addresses whether and how welfare generosity may influence people’s willingness to migrate. In doing so, we distinguish between two potential mechanisms, innovatively focusing on welfare provisions in both the country of origin and destination. First, a generous welfare system in the country of origin may have a retaining impact, as individuals may be unwilling to migrate to countries offering less social protection. Second, generous welfare provisions in the country of destination may enable migration for individuals who are more intolerant of uncertainty and who otherwise would prefer to remain immobile. We test both mechanisms using stated preference data collected with a unique experimental design among over 300 Dutch Master students. Confirming the first mechanism, we indeed find that respondents report a lower willingness to migrate when evaluating hypothetical scenarios where the level of social protection was higher in the country of origin as compared with the country of destination. Furthermore, and in line with the second mechanism, individuals who are more intolerant of uncertainty generally report a lower willingness to migrate, yet their willingness to migrate increases for scenarios with higher levels of unemployment benefits. Our findings, thus, indeed suggest that welfare arrangements are mainly serving a safety net function and need to be understood in relative terms between the country of origin and destination.

Unemployment and political trust across 24 Western democracies: Evidence on a welfare state paradox

Set against the backdrop of the Great Recession, the paper explores the interplay of unemployment experiences and political trust in the USA and 23 European countries between 2002 and 2017. Drawing on harmonized data from the European Social Survey and the General Social Survey, we confirm that citizens’ personal experiences of unemployment depress trust in democratic institutions in all countries. Using multilevel linear probability models, we show that the relationship between unemployment and political trust varies between countries, and that, paradoxically, the negative effect of unemployment on political trust is consistently stronger in the more generous welfare states. This result holds while controlling for a range of other household and country-level predictors, and even in mediation models that incorporate measures of households’ economic situation to explain the negative effect of unemployment on trust. As expected, country differences in the generosity of welfare states are reflected in the degree to which financial difficulties are mediating the relationship between unemployment and political trust. Overlaying economic deprivation, however, cultural mechanisms of stigmatization or status deprivation seem to create negative responses to unemployment experiences, and these render the effect of unemployment on political trust increasingly negative in objectively more generous welfare states.

Do generous unemployment benefits facilitate transition into more-secure labour market positions? Insights from a multilevel latent Markov model

A large body of research suggests that generous welfare provisions for jobseekers create a disincentive to work. Other scholars argue that generous benefits can reduce unemployment by serving as a job-search subsidy. One caveat in this literature is that, when testing the two hypotheses, many scholars conceive of labour markets as homogeneous entities or they theoretically assume a certain insider/outsider divide. In this article, we claim that the employment effect of generous benefits varies between labour market segments. Analysing EU-SILC panel data of 27 European countries, we find that more-generous unemployment cash benefits enhance the transition from unemployment into more-secure work while discouraging transition into less-secure work in terms of temporal, economic and organisational security. Contrary to existing research, welfare generosity is measured by aggregated information on individual benefit receipt. Labour market segments are identified by latent class analysis and transitions between segments are estimated by Multilevel Latent Markov Models.

The Exclusionary Foundations of Embedded Liberalism

Analyses of embedded liberalism have focused overwhelmingly on trade in goods and capital, to the exclusion of migration. We argue that much as capital controls were essential components of the embedded liberal compromise, so too were restrictions on the democratic and social rights of labor migrants. Generous welfare programs in labor-receiving countries thrived alongside inclusionary immigration policies, but this balanced arrangement was only tenable if migrants were politically excluded in their destination countries. That is, embedded liberalism abroad rested on exclusionary political foundations at home. In bringing together the IPE literature on the “globalization trilemma” with the comparative politics of citizenship, we provide a novel account of how embedded liberalism worked politically, with implications for current debates about the fate of the liberal order in a time of populist resurgence.

Securing Old-Age Pensions Across Borders: Sudanese Transnational Families Across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan

This chapter explores the social-protection domain of old-age pensions for Sudanese transnational families. The chapter is based on data collected during 14 months of multi-sited and partly matched-sample ethnographic fieldwork (2015–2017) with 21 Sudanese migrants in the Netherlands, 22 in the UK and 19 of their families in Sudan. Drawing on the life stories of members of different Sudanese families, this contribution addresses the question of what kinds of consideration underlie the decisions of Sudanese migrants when moving to certain places to secure their old-age pension. The chapter shows that the different mobilities in which Sudanese migrants engage have the double aim of both providing for their elderly parents back home now and securing their own pension in the future. The findings question the idea of ‘welfare shopping’ and show that migrants’ decision to move is not based so much on more or less generous welfare states but on the possibilities to arrange their own and their families’ social protection in a manner that is deemed better in the family’s understanding of social protection, which is strongly embedded in practices of generalised reciprocity.

The partisan politics of the penal–welfare nexus: a quantitative analysis of party influence on the relationship between penal and welfare policies

Evidence of a link between the retrenchment of the welfare state and the expansion of the penal state has sparked a debate about the existence of a nexus. In this study, we critically explore this link by focusing on political parties. First, we argue that welfare and penal policies are likely to follow distinct paths, with left-liberal/green parties pushing for less punitive penal and market-liberal/conservative parties for less generous welfare policy. Second, we only expect a nexus between both policy domains if conservative or “third way” social democratic governments are in power. The former follows a coherent ideology, the latter compensates for welfare retrenchment with tough-on-crime policies. We test these claims quantitatively on a unique dataset covering all changes to welfare and penal legislation in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and France between 1990 and 2014 and find our expectations supported except conservative influence on the penal–welfare nexus.

Living Alone in the United States and Europe: The Impact of Public Support on the Independence of Older Adults

While we know that living alone is often associated with greater risk of financial hardship, we have limited knowledge on the possible link between the availability of public support and independent living. We use data from the 2014 Health and Retirement Study and the 2011–2015 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to compare income and wealth profiles of the population aged 60 and above who are living alone in the United States and 19 European countries. We find that the likelihood of living alone is higher in generous welfare states, with social support and spending both positively associated with living alone. The relationship between personal resources and living alone has a smaller positive gradient in countries with robust welfare systems. The lack of adequate public support in less generous welfare states may constrain the ability of many low-income older adults without a partner to continue living independently.

Explanations: welfare and politics matter

The impacts of welfare policies and political choices are explored in this chapter. Comprehensive and generous welfare systems that encompass housing, health and other social services, as well as income supports, provide important buffers that lessen the likelihood that people will experience homelessness. The evidence from social democratic welfare regimes such as Denmark is that those who do experience homelessness despite such developed welfare systems tend to have a higher rate of psychosocial difficulties compared to the general population, and this is also likely to be the case in Finland. It was traditionally the case in Ireland, but has become less so in recent years.

Comparison of Japanese and German nursing homes: Implications of demographic and policy differences

Background This research provides a comparative study of Japanese and German nursing homes. Although these two aging countries share similar long-term care policies based on social insurance, descriptive statistics show the existence of a large difference in the outcomes of their nursing home sectors. This research pursues the reason behind these observations, looking at demographic and policy differences between the two countries. Methods To shed light from multiple angles, we conduct empirical analysis using three methods: regression, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, and data envelopment analysis using regional data from the past decade. Results Our empirical results find that different outcomes are driven by both demographic and policy differences.Conclusions The results from the demographic elements indicate that the process of ageing will have a severer consequence for Germany than for Japan when Germany would catch up with the age profile of Japan. Among the policy elements, our result is consistent to the existence of moral hazard in Germany due to a generous welfare program.