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Introduction
Jon Kvist works at the Dep of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University. Jon has published widely on the Nordic welfare model, social investments, Europeanization and comparative methods and is currently working on behavioural public policy. He is in the: European Social Policy Network counselling the European Commission; Minimum Income Benefit Commission to propose reform of the Danish MIB system; and the Commission for Second Generation Reforms showing new forms of welfare reforms.
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October 2008 - January 2014
August 1992 - September 2008
Publications
Publications (100)
This book presents 23 in-depth case studies of successful public policies and programmes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. Each chapter tells the story of the policy’s origins, aims, design, decision-making and implementation processes, and assesses in which respects—programmatically, process-wise, politically and over time—and to wh...
This book presents 23 in-depth case studies of successful public policies and programmes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. Each chapter tells the story of the policy’s origins, aims, design, decision-making and implementation processes, and assesses in which respects—programmatically, process-wise, politically and over time—and to wh...
Nordic countries are known for having extensive welfare services, a highly compressed wage structure owing to strong social partners, as well as effective regulation and governance in public administration. Various typologies capture aspects of the institutional features of families of nations across various policy areas, showing that there is a sp...
The likelihood that longevity will continue to increase has generated a search for regulation that make people work longer as they live longer, and thus not just containing pension expenditure but also enlarging labor supply, economic growth, and tax revenue. In public pension policy, Nordic countries have led the world with three types of approach...
Artiklen diskuterer fordele og ulemper ved at inddrage adfærdsøkonomiske effekter i de regnemodeller, som benyttes af bl.a. Finansministeriet. Artiklen bruger den seneste reform af dagpengesystemet fra 2015 som case. Artiklen konkluderer, at selvom der er vanskeligheder ved at fastlægge den præcise størrelsesorden af potentielle adfærdsøkonomiske e...
Introduction
Marrying the goals of inclusive growth with the means of social investments over the life course may become one of the most promising innovations in global social policy thinking in the 21st century.
Inclusive growth was one of three flagship objectives of the EU's Europe 2020 strategy. Launched in 2010 this strategy aimed at inclusive...
Globally, policymakers are promoted social investments as a reform strategy to increase individuals’ capacities and national economic growth. This chapter establishes a framework consisting of generational, life-course perspectives on social investments and inclusive growth. The generational perspective brings out that social investments involve ho...
On 18 May 2017, Denmark adopted a new unemployment insurance scheme for the self- employed and persons in non- standard jobs. In this new scheme, unemployment is defined in relation to activities rather than to a categorisation as either self- employed or wage earner. Income as both wage earner and self-employed as well as income from multiple inco...
Friends and relatives provides invaluable informal care in all European countries. But what support do they get to balance care with work? Which recognition do they get in terms of financial and practical help? And what rights do they have independently of the person cared for to respite offers, advice, training, and to be included and heard in the...
Does social benefits attract migrants? In turn does social benefits reduce migrants motivation to work and become integrated? Is increased diversity and equality the new big trade-off? These questions can now be examined using new statistics and analysis from Statistics Denmark, Eurostat and the OECD.
Countries can be judged by how they treat their weakest citizens. Following recent welfare reforms the question is how the Nordic countries, including Denmark, treats its weakest in an international perspective. The analysis finds that Denmark today provides good quality services to help vulnerable citizens get better health, education and work. Ec...
The fight against poverty and social exclusion is at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. With more than 120 million people in the EU at risk of poverty or social exclusion, EU leaders have pledged to bring at least 20 million people out of poverty and social exclusion by 2020. In the aftermath of the c...
The economic crisis has hit youth harder than any other group. The European Commission wants the EU Youth Guarantee to change this. But is that feasiible?
The Danish government presented its “2025 reform proposals” on 1 September 2016. One proposal is to mandate funded pension coverage to individuals who are currently not saving sufficiently for old age. The government also proposes to improve incentives to save for old age in the last five working years.
The Second Main Report of the Expert Group on Welfare for the Scottish Government. The report contains analysis and policy recommendations in the context of a independent Scotland. The members of the group are Martyn Evans, Mike Brewer, Jon Kvist, Gunner Logan, Alisa McKay, Julia Unwin, David Watt, and Lynn Williams. They received secretarial help...
Since 2013 the European Union has promoted social investments as a national reform strategy to increase individuals’ capacities and national economic growth. However, to take full advantage of social investments, the strategy needs a more coherent framework that takes into account the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of social issues and social...
This chapter argues that in order to observe immigrant-targeted welfare retrenchment, researchers need to analyse more than levels of benefits. Focusing on policy programmes that provide a disproportionate amount of benefits to immigrants, especially those who are newly arrived, on eligibility criteria and the conditions and sanctions that are impo...
In this introduction to the special issue, we review the various debates spurred by Esping-Andersen’s The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Tracing its impact since the book’s publication in 1990, we show that Three Worlds continues to be the point of reference for comparative welfare state research. A content analysis of articles in the Journal...
By whom, where, and when you are born matters for your life chances. This implies a loss of human capital among those so unfortunate as to originate from socially less privileged backgrounds, dire economic times, areas of social or economic disarray, or, as is often the case, a combination of all three. The social investment strategy is about avoid...
From 2013 the European Union has promoted social investments as a national reform strategy to increase individuals' capacities and national economic growth. However, to take full advantage of social investments, the strategy needs a more coherent framework that takes into account the dynamic and multidimensional nature of social issues and social i...
Introduktion Velfaerdsturisme er et af de mest debatterede socialpolitiske emner og kan få afgørende betydning for dansk velfaerdspolitik. Spørgsmålet er om den danske velfaerdsmodel er mulig og ønskelig i et EU, hvor stadigt flere EU-borgere har adgang til stadig flere danske ydelser på grund af EU-udvidelser og domme afsagt ved EU-Domstolen? Velf...
Social protection against unemployment is on the European agenda because of the economic crisis. Because European family patterns have changed over the last three decades the social protection for unemployment may be very different during this economic crisis compared to earlier. In particular the combination of more diverse families and broad unem...
Examining the generosity of welfare states and individual benefit schemes is a classical task in comparative welfare state studies. Three types of welfare states can be discerned based, in part on their level of benefit generosity. Although significant advances have been made in the development of measures of welfare state generosity, this Progress...
From outside the toxified ‘work incentives’ debate in the UK, Anders Freundt, Simon Grundt Straubinger and Jon Kvist tackle the question of fertility and employment traps within contemporary social security systems. Their analysis explores cross-national differences between seven Northern European countries in the relationship between social securi...
Introduction
European family structures and labour markets have changed markedly over the last 40 years but social security reforms have lagged behind in responding to these changes in many countries. The share of lone-parent households in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries rose from 5.5% in the mid-1980s to 8.1...
This paper offers a theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of the changing European social models in wake of the economic crisis and the promotion of social investments by the European Commission. Theoretically, the article provides a conceptual framework for comparative macro-analysis of social investments that takes into acco...
QCA's ability of addressing complex theoretical expectations and taking account of configurational relationships is rarely fully exploited. Assessing comparative welfare-state research, which has employed QCA, we find that only about half of the studies reviewed have expressed complex theoretical propositions in set-theoretical terms, revisited cas...
This working paper by Jochen Clasen and Daniel Clegg, of the University of Edinburgh, together with Jon Kvist of the University of Southern Denmark, examines the nature of impact of the economic and political challenges engendered by the “Great Recession” on labour market policy reforms in Europe. The authors thus consider the question of whether t...
Whether the Nordic countries have stemmed the international tide of inequality better, worse or merely different from other Western countries is the question addressed in this final chapter. Applying the results of the analysis in the previous chapters, this chapter prepares trends across different aspects of inequality and the Nordic welfare model...
The chapter examines the interaction between the labour market, employment and social security in different welfare state regimes. It looks at the extent to which we can find regime-based differences in labour markets, in the generosity of unemployment insurance or in the economic consequences of being employed, becoming unemployed for a shorter or...
This introductory chapter describes why and how the Nordic welfare model is interesting in the current era of reforming labour markets and social protection policies. The basic characteristics of the model are set out, with an emphasis on equality. This is followed by a discussion of the debated pressures on the equality aspect of the model that ar...
The Nordic countries have been able to raise living standards and curb inequalities without compromising economic growth. But with social inequalities on the rise how do they fare when compared to countries with alternative welfare models, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany? Taking a comparative perspective, this book casts new...
Taking a comparative perspective, this book casts new light on the changing inequalities in Europe.
Taking a comparative perspective, this book casts new light on the changing inequalities in Europe.
Introduction: inequality on the rise?
Nordic mass media regularly announce the end of equality in the Nordic countries – is it a reality or merely another example of journalistic dramatisation and myth-building? In this book we aim to clarify in what ways equality has actually characterised the Nordic countries and to what extent we now find less e...
The Nordic welfare model is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Using Denmark we show how a universal welfare state model is gradually being transformed into an emergent multi-tiered welfare state. Whereas the Danish pension system's having become multi-tiered in the 1990s, with private schemes – collective and individual – supplementing publi...
A better understanding of the types and effects of labour market policies is high on political and academic research agendas. Globalisation requires flexible labour markets, and ageing populations stress the need for more labour supply. Both factors highlight the role of labour market policies in reducing unemployment and increasing employment. How...
Under the heading of flexicurity, Danish labour market activation policies are receiving international attention because of their perceived ability both to curb unemployment and to boost employment. Indeed, the objectives, target groups and design of activation policy have undergone a remarkable transformation over the past fifteen years. From the...
During the past ten years, the Europeanisation of social protection has undergone transformation and change. Europeanisation of social protection concerns the relationship between the national and EU levels in social protection. Originally, Jean Monnet and other architects of the EU bought into neofunctionalist theories of European integration. Neo...
Social protection in the EU is primarily a national preserve. The EU has little competence in social protection; regulative powers are limited and resources are few. The EU cannot specify particular social protection policies. Member States are left to decide what type and level of social protection they want and are able to afford. Ten years ago,...
The relationship between national social policy and the EU is a recurrent theme in public debate throughout Europe. These debates are sparked by EU referenda, regardless of their official theme, with Dutch and French polls on the European Constitution as clear examples. Both entailed heated discussions of the impact and implication of the EU enlarg...
During the past 10 years, the Europeanisation of social protection has undergone a remarkable transformation. Europeanisation of social protection concerns the relationship between the national and EU levels in social protection. Originally, Jean Monnet and other architects of the European Communities (later the European Union, EU) bought into neof...
Social protection in the European Union (EU) is primarily a national preserve. The EU has little competence in social protection: regulative powers are limited and resources scarce. The EU cannot stipulate specific social protection policies, for example, the harmonisation of Member States’ social protection systems, nor can it carry out its own so...
This book challenges the common view that social protection is exclusively a national concern, with European Union (EU) social policy fragmented and merely symbolic. Through eleven country studies, it reveals that EU-level developments increasingly interact with social protection in all countries – a remarkable transformation from ten years ago. Us...
This article advances a new method for studying cases, fuzzy set ideal type analysis, which is a framework that allows a precise operationalization of theoretical concepts, the configuration of concepts into ideal types, and the categorisation of cases. In a Weberian sense, ideal types are analytical constructs for use as yardsticks for measuring t...
This book challenges the common view that social protection is exclusively a national concern with EU social policy fragmented and merely symbolic. Through eleven country studies, the book reveals that EU-level developments increasingly interact with social protection in all countries-a remarkable transformation from ten years ago. Using the same t...
Ideal types and fuzzy sets -Exemplified by Nordic family policy in the 1990s Fuzzy-set theory is a new method for the social sciences. It allows for a precise operationalisation of theoretical concepts, the configuration of concepts into analytical constructs such as idealtypes, and the categorisation of cases. In a Weberian sense ideal types are a...
Assessing diversity remains a big challenge in social science. Diversity implies qualitative and quantitative differentiation, that is of similarities and differences in kind and degree. One hundred years ago Max Weber suggested to study the conformity of cases to analytical constructs by way of constructing ideal types as yardsticks (Weber 1904)....
This article examines whether Eastern enlargement has led the EU 15 member states to enter strategic interactions implying a race to the bottom. The question is whether concerns about welfare migration have led to downward pressure on the EU 15 member states in the form of more restrictive access to their labour markets and adjustments of their soc...
Social citizenship is distributed unevenly across the population in all countries. People differ in how much they pay in taxes and in how much they receive in benefits. The empirical quest is to convey this differential treatment. Conventional measures of social citizenship in comparative studies are indicators based on institutional information on...
Comment maintenir la protection sociale des catégories les plus faibles de la population quand les demandes des groupes à hauts et moyens revenus augmentent parallèlement à leurs revenus, sans porter atteinte à la crois-sance économique dans son ensemble ? C'est le principal défi auquel les États providence (Welfare State) scandinaves sont confront...
Although contemporary comparative welfare state research has advanced our knowledge of how welfare states respond to exogenous and endogenous pressures, the nature and implications of these pressures themselves on post-industrial societies remains somewhat unknown. In the research literature phenomena such as globalization, Europeanization, demogra...
Traditionally Sweden is heralded as epitomising the Scandinavian welfare model, not least to its perceived success in keeping unemployment and labour market inequalities low whilst still securing social protection and economic growth. In contrast, Denmark and Finland have been conceived as the Scandinavian “welfare laggards” primarily due to compar...
There exists a broad consensus among welfare state researchers that the welfare state has not been retrenched in any fundamental manner. Instead, a process of restructuring is unfolding in response to globalization, European integration and internal pressures. However, the question remains whether welfare state reform has led to convergence on the...
abstract,There exists a broad consensus among,welfare state researchers that the welfare state has not been retrenched,in any fundamental manner. Instead, a process of restructuringis unfolding in response to globalization, European integration and internal pressures. However, the question remains whether welfare state reform has led to convergence...
This article uses a new method for policy analysis, fuzzy-set theory, which is a framework that allows for a precise operationalization of theoretical concepts. Fuzzy-set theory is used to assess the conformity of the Nordic countries to a pre-conceptualized ideal-typical Nordic welfare model. This permits us to assess recent welfare reform and jud...
Employed workers cannot access unemployment insurance as a matter of choice. Benefit periods and benefit amounts vary between groups in the population. Unemployment benefit recipients have not only rights to benefits but also obligations to meet in order to maintain eligibility. The existence of functional equivalent benefit schemes contributes to...
Sumario: This book is a cross-national study of social security in eight Northen European countries: Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The book discusses and analyses the situation, problems, and trands in social security, providing an in-depth discussion of the main trends and challenges in...
During the preparations for the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked three research institutes to contribute essays on Danish experiences and considerations that might be of interest within the framework of the Social Summit. The papers submitted examine: the rise and development of the welfare sta...
PrattHenry J., Grey Agendas: Interest Groups and Public Pensions in Canada, Britain, and the United States, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1993, 241 pp., £21.00 hard. SalminenKari, Pension Schemes in the Making: A Comparative Study of the Scandinavian Countries, The Central Pension Security Institute, Helsinki, 1993, 410 pp., £16.00 p...
Sumario: This book describes the tax aspects of social security in the EC. Special regard is taken to the international market and its completion. Social security is exemplified by pension schemes. The national overview is based on interviews with national experts and various reports
1. Einführung -In den 80er Jahren waren Diskussionen darüber weit verbreitet, ob die wirtschaftli-chen Probleme Europas durch die großzügig ausgebauten Wohlfahrtsstaaten verur-sacht würden. Zu jener Zeit sah man in den weitreichenden Sozialschutzsystemen den Hauptgrund dafür, dass sich in Europa das amerikanische Beschäftigungswun-der nicht wiederh...
