Patricia Frericks

Universität Kassel · Sociology and Economy of the Welfare State

Zusammenfassung Ein zentrales Element wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Tätigkeit ist Umverteilung. Familie stellt dabei ein wichtiges Kriterium in der Umverteilung europäischer Wohlfahrtsstaaten dar. Bisher wurde Familie als eigenständiges Prinzip wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Umverteilung jedoch kaum analysiert. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht auf Basis des europä...

Redistribution is one of the fundamental characteristics of developed societies. While societal redistribution between working and non-working citizens has been studied intensively, redistribution in terms of family has been analysed mainly as private redistribution. In this contribution, we study societal redistribution in terms of family by syste...

Family is one of the major principles of welfare state redistribution. It has, however, rarely been at the centre of welfare state research. This contribution intends to help remedy the research gap in family-related redistribution. By examining the German welfare state which is known to be both redistributive and family-oriented, we want to answer...

Objective: In this contribution, the question is raised in how far family care work is covered in the social rights of European welfare states, focussing on pension entitlements for family-provided long-term care. Background: Old-age pensions are the major redistributive system of present-day societies. Central to current discourses on pensions and...

The Oxford International Handbook of Family Policy has two main aims: to identify key developments globally in regard to the forms and modalities of relevant policies, and to take a critical look at the developments regarding those policies. The overall goal is to uncover the extent to which concerns about the family and the role and practices of p...

Redistribution is one of the main characteristics of the welfare state, and welfare state research has dealt intensely with various facets of it. The main focus in analysing redistribution is on the redistributive logics of welfare states in terms of work-related rights. Family as a major principle of welfare state redistribution, though, has hardl...

Old-age pensions are the major redistributive system of present-day societies. Central to current discourses on pensions and their reforms is the relevance of work as gainful employment for building up pension rights. Family care work is largely disregarded. Applying the innovative SCQual method, this article systematically quantifies and maps fami...

Social research is rich in methods for analysing societal differences. Yet, although qualitative characteristics are a key component to understanding such differences, the analysis of qualitative data remains a major methodological challenge in most social research, particularly when aiming to compare more than a few cases. The article proposes an...

Pension policies are a major topic of political debate, whose discussions concentrate on both the instruments and general objectives of the system of pension provision. This volume includes research on different problems and reform alternatives in this respect, focusing especially on state pensions. Its chapters deal—among other issues—with the rol...

Countries around the world have undertaken pension reforms and introduced market-based schemes to replace parts of existing public schemes. Previous research has shown how these reforms are often driven by a commitment to individualisation, and accompanied by rhetoric that encourages ‘self-responsibility’. To date, however, no research has examined...

Whether and to what extent the means of family members and familial care activities are relevant in the calculation of welfare benefits is often neglected in welfare state analysis. By quantifying qualitative institutional data, we analyze this aspect and how it has changed in regard to minimum-income benefits for persons of pension age and unemplo...

Europäische Wohlfahrtsstaaten wurden in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten tiefgreifend reformiert. Die Reformen orientierten sich dabei stark am Leitbild der Eigenverantwortung. Für die soziale Sicherung bedeutete dies, so die gängige Einschätzung, eine Individualisierung der Ansprüche, die sich in verschärften Anspruchskriterien und insbesondere in d...

Self-responsibility is a prominent keyword in social policy and in welfare state reforms. The concept of self-responsibility, though, has never been clearly dissected for welfare state analysis. In particular, the debate on the turn toward self-responsibility in welfare states has not been adequately conceptualized, nor has the institutionalization...

Current societies have undergone a many-faceted but also general turn toward self-responsibility. This is hardly contested, as shown by societal analyses of different kinds. Up to now though, the literature on self-responsibility has either focused on specific areas of society or hardly discussed the concept in sociological depth. In this special i...

In the social sciences it is hardly contested that “institutions matter”. Consequently the analysis of differences and similarities of institutions should be a routine task. Prevailing methods to the measurement of institutions are however problematic, in particular when they have to deal with different levels of measurement. To overcome this, in t...

European welfare states used to be based on the principle of the family. Since the 1990s, however, ‘individual responsibility’ has been promoted, which fundamentally alters the traditional welfare-institutional framing of the family and the corresponding construction of the social citizen. One policy field that has been heavily influenced by this d...

Purpose Much has been said about institutional change and the forms it can take, whether it is abrupt or incremental, path breaking or path dependent. This strand of research is highly relevant in times of welfare institutional reforms and changes. A puzzle, however, remains, and it concerns the empirical phenomena that there might be institutiona...

Welfare institutions have long been set up in most European countries in ways oriented towards the family as the one basic principle. Reforms in recent times however have fundamentally changed the conception of the social citizen. Yet social rights are still mainly conceptualised in the literature in terms of employee rights, and family elements ar...

Der Wandel des europäischen Kapitalismus von einer vornehmlich industrialisierten einer finanzmarktorientierten Ausrichtung zeigt sich auch an den Reformen zentraler wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Institutionen. Die Finanzialisierung hat dabei insbesondere in der Alterssicherung den Alltag der Bürgerinnen und Bürger erreicht, indem der Sozialstaat Teile der...

Since the 1990s, and increasingly so, European welfare states have been undergoing fundamental change. The analysis presented in this book shows that these changes may be interpreted as a paradigmatic shift of European societies, since fundamental concepts, principles and societal effects of welfare institutions have been redefined, reset and rearr...

Welfare states and social security institutions are positioned at a nexus of the two principles self-responsibility and solidarity resulting in higher or lower social inequality. Despite historical and national particularities, it is possible to identify common tendencies in their relational developments in Europe. Here, four of them will be analys...

Since the 1990s so-called mature and upcoming welfare states have undergone fundamental reforms. These reforms are related to social, demographic and cultural changes, and they are at the same time highly influenced by a currently leading political concept: i.e. that of the self-responsible social citizen. Concurrently, it is widely assumed that we...

In early welfare states, social rights predominantly derived from formal employment relations. Within the past two decades, however, some European countries have opened these social institutions to care work also. Cash-for-care and social entitlements for periods of at-home family caregiving have changed the characteristics of informal care work th...

Altersarmut schien in westeuropäischen Ländern gleichsam überwunden. Nachholbedarf wurde für verschiedene Länder für Frauen identifiziert, doch aufgrund ihrer vermehrten Arbeitsmarktpartizipation und der etwaigen Anerkennung von Kindererziehungszeiten schien das Phänomen der Altersarmut auch für zukünftige Rentnerinnen passé (Übersicht in Frericks...

In the past two decades, the question of how pension systems should be designed to offer ‘adequate and sustainable pensions for all’ has been raised. As a result, European pension systems, in which market principles in general have played a marginal or even negligible role in the past, were redesigned, with market-based pensions becoming part of th...

This book offers an analysis of European capitalist welfare societies, centering on the questions of sustainability and the financing of social rights. Capitalism is defined as a multi-model economy, comprising of a market economy (including production, distribution and exchange), a state welfare economy (based on compulsory transfers, such as taxe...

The restructuring of modern capitalist welfare states is characterised by the tendency to individualise social protection. This article develops a simple and conceptually sound typology to analyse and classify these reforms and measures with regard to their effects on women's financial well-being. It distinguishes between policy measures that aim t...

Social sciences have investigated the life course in numerous different ways. Long-established approaches to the life course can be identified in psychology, sociology and in demography. In psychology, individual life courses have received considerable attention, referred to as life-span psychology, for example, in studies of the cognitive and emot...

Are European welfare states sustainable? How can social citizenship be financed in the future? These are the questions this book attempts to answer. According to our perspective, welfare states are not independent entities, as social policy studies might suggest. On the contrary, instituted welfare arrangements are organic ingredients of European c...

In this chapter we introduce the corollary of our conceptual framework: a proposal for a suitable frame of analysis of present-day European capitalist welfare societies. The role of the European Union (EU) and of national states for capitalist welfare societies’ developments will also be presented. The following chapters take an empirical look at t...

It was argued in the first chapter that welfare states are not separate, autonomous entities, whose origin can be precisely dated and whose role would be a mitigation of the misery imposed by the hardships of a kind of ‘naked’ capitalism. On the contrary, various forms of support for the poor and for those unable to sell their labour have always ex...

This study has raised questions as to whether European capitalist welfare societies are sustainable and has examined how social citizenship can be financed in the future. In order to answer these questions an original conceptual framework was introduced in the first four chapters.

The connection between the different economic modes, such as the household economic mode and the market mode, has changed considerably in recent decades. Citizens’ engagement in the various modes has shifted, as have the resources flowing within them. A restructuring of labour markets, households, and, since the 1990s, of the welfare economic modes...

The final construction phase of European multi-modal capitalist welfare societies after World War II presupposed a homogeneous national population with the ‘usual’ stratifications in terms of class, gender, education levels and qualifications. In the meantime, migrants have come to constitute a significant percentage of the European population, som...

Purpose – Currently, different experiments in (partially) outsourcing public social protection to the market are observed. This paper seeks to identify two very different paths to outsourcing social protection: fragmentation of social protection on the one hand (in personal savings accounts) and amalgamation of social protection on the other (in li...

Rentensysteme befinden sich derzeit in einem umfassenden Veränderungsprozess. Öffentliche Regelungssysteme werden neu formiert und zum Teil durch marktbezogene Systeme ersetzt. Dabei bleiben die normativen Ansprüche europäischer Wohlfahrtsstaaten unverändert: Neben der Armutsvermeidung sollen "angemessene und nachhaltige Renten für alle" (EC-Report...

Pension entitlements are based on certain assumptions. On the one hand, there are assumptions about the individual substantiated in life-course norms that focus on labour market participation. On the other hand, there are assumptions about societal necessities, such as intergenerational and intragenerational justice, economic growth, pension scheme...

Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, in various European welfare reforms, parts of the social insurance systems and the related resources were transferred to the financial market. In this sense, one can speak of privatisation and marketisation, both examples of a neo-liberal tendency. Now, after 'the Fall of Finance Capitalism', it is often stated that...

Life-course studies show that life courses have changed in several systematic ways. Because people now spend more years in education, participation in the labour market tends to start later. More time is spent in lifelong learning in the middle phase, in addition to work and care activities. Following decades during which the effective retirement a...

European pension reforms are dominated by the principles of privatization and individualization. Privatizing and individualizing pension entitlements call for a redefinition of the responsibilities of states and individuals. Moreover, statutorily introducing individualization calls for equal opportunities to be guaranteed. However, the implementati...

The authors argue that starting from a welfare state, based on specific assumptions regarding generations, gender, and labor markets, two extreme directions of possible development—toward privatization and toward solidarity—are currently being taken. European welfare reforms transfer many services, needs, and responsibilities to the market, example...

Pension levels in the EU15 are significantly gendered. Various reforms to pension systems explicitly aim at improving women's opportunities to build up pension entitlements. These reforms differ from country to country. We see so-called work–life balance policies to increase women's labour market participation by facilitating part-time employment i...

European pension systems are in the process of change. A general development is the retrenchment of public schemes. In combination with the aim of individualizing pension entitlements, it is crucial that the pension situation of women, and of mothers in particular, be improved. Some European countries attempt to reduce the gender pension gaps with...

In recent years, somewhat drastic pension reforms have taken place in all European countries. The pension systems developed in the last century are no longer considered to be suited to the changing demographic constellations in European countries, and the financial sustainability of these systems is under threat. Moreover, the changing political an...

The Dutch government attempts to base its social policy on a life course perspective, and it promotes such a perspective in Europe. This has led to the introduction of a Life Course Saving Scheme (starting in 2006), which aims to enable good management of the ‘peak hour’ of life and to facilitate transitions between and combinations of the activiti...

European pension reforms individualize and partly privatize pension entitlements. As a consequence, state and individual responsibilities require redefinition. Moreover, when individualization is statutorily introduced, equal opportunities need to be guaranteed. However, equal opportunities are a long way from being implemented. The various pension...

The title of my thesis already indicates that I did my research on what is called a hot topic: pensions in Europe. In all countries, pensions are built up through the labour market. This is true in two perspectives: firstly, for the individual entitlements and, secondly, for the financial means. With other words, the legitimation and the source of...

All European countries are aiming to reform their pension systems in line with two conceptual ideas: firstly, that systems should combine public, occupational and private pensions; secondly, that entitlements should be individualized. The Dutch and the Danish pension systems already consist of these three different pensions with relatively individu...

Rentensysteme und Rentenreformen in der EU bewegen sich im Spannungsverhältnis von Solidarität und Eigenverantwortung. Diese beiden Prinzipien werden länder- und zeitabhängig definiert. Dennoch lassen sich gemeinsame Entwicklungstendenzen erkennen. Wir analysieren vier Entwicklungstendenzen bezogen auf Reformcharakteristika: institutionelle Verschi...

Very different types of pension systems do exist in European countries. These pension systems have been elaborated fully after 1945. During the last twenty years, the various pension systems have been revised, reformed and changed in various ways. The research network 'RESORE' is exploring the role of the flows of resources involved in welfare arra...