No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Policy and practice: The relationship between family policy regime and women's labour market participation in Europe
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of different family policy systems in Europe and evaluate their impact on the employment strategy of mothers with care responsibilities for dependent children.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper outlines a typology of family policy regimes in Europe – covering the 26 countries. A typology based on a cluster analysis of macro indicators of family policy – coverage of childcare, effective parental leave and spending on family policies. The cluster analysis is based on data from OECD family data base. Then follows an analysis of the impact of the different family policy regimes on mothers' employment strategies when they return into gainful employment, based on data from the European Social Survey, 2008.
Findings
The authors have identified four different family policy models: extensive family policy, long parental leave, family care, and cash for care. For each of the models, different strategies are found for take up of employment for mothers with dependent children.
Originality/value
The paper includes 26 European countries, thereby covering the East and Central Europe, which is not the case in most welfare typologies. Furthermore, the authors distinguish clearly in the analyses between the institutional dimension and the outcome – mothers' employment strategies.
... Yet, its effect on female labor force participation is characterized by an inverted U-shape 5 (Akgunduz & Plantenga, 2013;Baum & Ruhm, 2016;Chatterji & Markowitz, 2005;Genre et al., 2010;Misra et al., 2011;Pettit & Hook, 2005;Steiber & Haas, 2012), which is dependent on the duration and compensation of the leave implemented. Generally, moderate length, well-paid, and wage-related leave improves female labor force participation and benefits (Boje & Ejranes, 2012;Fagan & Norman, 2012;Matysiak & Weziak-Bialowolska, 2013), while long, lowpaid, flat-rate leave decreases labor force participation and benefits (Gerecke, 2013;Orloff, 2009). 6 Although optimal duration in relation to improving female labor force participation is debated, what is clear is that countries with less generous leave policies, like Anglo-Saxon countries, display more part-time work and longer interruptions from the workplace due to childbirth (Gornick, Meyers, & Ross, 1997;Thévenon & Gauthier, 2011), while long, low-paid, flat-rate leave decreases labor force participation and benefits (Gerecke, 2013;Orloff, 2009), leading to the likelihood of more severe motherhood penalties. ...
... What is considered an 'optimal' length of leave, however, remains unclear. Generally, moderate length, well-paid, and wage-related leave improves female labor force participation and benefits (Boje & Ejranes, 2012;Fagan & Norman, 2012;Matysiak & Weziak-Bialowolska, 2013), while long, low-paid, flat-rate leave decreases labor force participation and benefits (Gerecke, 2013;Orloff, 2009). Concerning duration, longer leave has been found to reduce women's employment and earning outcomes (De Henau, Meulders, & O'Dorchai, 2011;Rønsen & Sundströ m, 2002). ...
Within developing countries, studies addressing the effects of maternity benefits on fertility, infant/child health, and women’s labor force participation are limited and provide contradictory findings. Yet, knowledge regarding the implementation of maternity provisions is essential, as such policies could significantly improve women and children’s well-‐being. We add to this literature by using fixed effects panel regression from 1999 through 2012 across 121 developing countries to explore whether different types of maternity leave policies affect infant/child mortality rates, fertility, and women’s labor force participation, and whether those effects are shaped by disparities in GDP per Capita and Secondary School Enrollment. Our findings demonstrate: 1) both infant and child mortality rates are expected to decline in countries that institute any leave policy, policies that last 12 weeks or longer, and policies that increase in duration and payment as a percentage of total annual salary, 2) fertility is expected to decline in countries that have higher weekly paid compensation, 3) maternity leave provisions decrease fertility and infant/child mortality rates most in countries with lower GDP per capita and countries with middle range secondary enrollment rates, and 4) labor force participation does not increase. Our results suggest that policy makers must consider the duration, compensation, and goals (addressing fertility versus mortality rates) of a policy alongside a country’s economic development and secondary school enrollment when determining which maternity leave provisions to apply within developing-‐country contexts.
... But the model has been criticized for overlooking gender relations, unpaid caring work, and the internal division of labor within the family/household. Feminist scholars have developed several alternative or modified typologies in response, taking women's unpaid work in the family into account (Boje and Ejrnaes, 2012;Budig et al., 2012;Folbre, 1994;Lewis, 1992;Melby et al., 2009;O'Connor, 1993;Orloff, 1993;Sainsbury, 1994Sainsbury, , 1999). Any one model will not explain all country variations (O'Reilly, 2006), but what all of them predict is that the construction of the welfare state will have consequences for women's life chances based on their sex and on the gender constructions of their society. ...
... Sweden has been characterized as a social democratic welfare state regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990), as a weak male breadwinner system (Lewis, 1992), and as a nation with an extensive family policy system (Boje and Ejrnaes, 2012). There is a well-developed, publicly funded universal health insurance system, unemployment insurance, and social assistance system, but the state also takes responsibility for children and the elderly, with publicly subsidized day care centers, public schools and universities, paid maternity and paternity leaves, medical and social care for the elderly, and the statutory right to stay home from work (also paid) with sick children for either parent-all financed through the tax system. ...
This research compares the positioning of women entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship policy over two decades (1989–2012) in Sweden and the United States. Given Sweden's uniquely family-friendly welfare state, we could expect different results, yet in both countries we find a legacy of discourse subordinating women's entrepreneurship to other goals (i.e., economic growth) and a positioning of women as ‘other’, reinforcing a dialogue of women's inadequacy or extraordinariness without taking full account of the conditions shaping women's work experience. From this analysis we derive a conceptual schematic of assumptions presented through the discourse, aligning and distinguishing the U.S. and Swedish approaches.
... He was concerned with social stratification according to class, but not gender. To address the shortcomings of gender-blind welfare state theorising, feminist scholars have developed alternative or modified typologies using alternative empirical indicators, such as women's unpaid work in the family (Boje & Ejrnaes, 2012;Budig et al., 2012;Folbre, 1994;Lewis, 1992;Melby et al., 2009;O'Connor, 1993;Orloff, 1993;Sainsbury, 1996Sainsbury, , 1999Sainsbury, , 1994. None of these models can explain all possible country variations (O´Reilly, 2006), but they all predict that the construction of the welfare state will have consequences for women's life chances. ...
... While the identified care regimes bear similarities to the previous typologies of family policies (e.g. Bambra, 2007;Boje and Ejrnaes, 2012;Leitner, 2003;Saxonberg, 2013), the consideration of three care providers simultaneously leads to a slightly different classification. Like, for example, Ciccia and Verloo (2012), we do not find a united Southern European care regime. ...
Purpose
Public willingness to pay for extra public benefits and services may demonstrate a tension between the common good (more services) and economic motives (higher taxes for all). In this article, the authors present an analysis of this trade-off by drawing upon the Bourdieusian theory of social reproduction and habitus .
Design/methodology/approach
Employing the European Social Survey (2016), the authors first examine the patterns of relationships between the agents' position in the social structure and their attitudes across care regimes in Europe. The authors then analyse whether this link is mediated by agents' individual trajectories and dispositions, such as their beliefs towards equality or tradition, political orientation, or religiosity.
Findings
The findings support the importance of both sociation and individuation in habitus formation, albeit to varying degrees across the regimes. Individual attitudes are therefore shaped not only by interests of reproducing or maximising social positions but also by more reflexive propensities to think about the common good.
Originality/value
In this article, the authors draw upon the theory of social reproduction and habitus by Pierre Bourdieu, who has been thus far rarely employed in the study of welfare attitudes. The article also contributes to the literature that studies the trade-off between the expansion and financing of reconciliation policies.
... In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten wurden zwar zunehmend Maßnahmen zur Gleichberechtigung und Chancengleichheit im Kontext von Arbeit und Familie ergriffen, welche die finanziellen und zeitbezogenen Belastungen von Eltern reduzieren sollen (Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015). Im Ergebnis stellt der deutsche Staat Eltern jedoch nach wie vor deutlich weniger Unterstützungsangebote bereit als etwa skandinavische Länder, die einem sozialdemokratischen Wohlfahrtsstaatsmodell unterliegen (Boje & Ejrnaes, 2012). Um ein besseres Verständnis über die Bedeutung sozialpolitischer Rahmenbe- ...
... In contrast, authors with roots in historical institutionalism have argued that politics and policies matter. Esping-Andersen's (1990) seminal study on welfare regimes, for instance, has evaluated the institutional/structural impacts of various policy regimes on individual opinions on welfare policies (see also Arts & Gelissen, 2001;Boje & Ejrnaes, 2012;Esser, 2005;Korpi, 2000;Papadakis & Bean, 1993;Sjöberg, 2004). More specifically regarding childcare and leave policies, Kangas and Rostgaard (2007) have shown that attitudes on family and working life certainly matter, and other studies (e.g., Duvander, 2014) have found genderequality orientation to matter for how fathers use parental leave. ...
The prevailing gender ideologies in the Nordic countries generally support the equal division of work and family life between men and women, including the equal sharing of parental leave. Regardless, as the exceptional case in the Nordic region, Denmark currently has no father’s quota, and this despite the strong impact such policy has effectively proven to have on gender equality in take-up of parental leave. While a quota intended for the father is instead implemented in Denmark via collective agreements, this is mainly available for fathers in more secure labour market positions. This situates Danish fathers, mothers and their children very unequally regarding parental leave entitlements, and the existing inequalities continue across gender, social class and labour market positions. This article explores to what extent institutional variables vis-à-vis cultural explanations such as gender attitudes provide an understanding of why Danish fathers take less parental leave than other Nordic fathers. We use data from the European Values Study (1990‒2017) as well as administrative data for fathers’ parental leave take-up in the same period, relative to the other Nordics and for specific education backgrounds. We conclude that Danish men and women are even more supportive of gender equality in terms of work‒family life sharing compared to other Nordic countries. This indicates that institutional conditions such as parental leave entitlement matter for leave take-up, but in the Danish case attitudes do less so. Not having a father’s quota seems to affect fathers disproportionally across the education divide, and the lower parental leave take-up among Danish men with little education is primarily ascribed to their labour market insecurity. The policy implication is clear: If we want mothers and fathers with different social backgrounds to share parental leave more equally, the policy must change—not attitudes.
... Similarly, comparative studies have shown that European countries with universalistic health systems also feature liberal or corporatist pension systems (Bertin and Robertson, 2013). Driven by concerns on the limitations of the welfare-as-a-whole classifications, a large body of literature has identified policy-specific welfare typologies through comparative analyses of, for example, the fields of healthcare (Bambra, 2005;Böhm et al., 2013;Jensen, 2008;Joumard et al., 2010;Reibling, 2010;Wendt, 2009;Wendt, 2014) and social care (Bambra, 2004;Bambra, 2007;Bettio and Plantenga, 2004;Boje and Ejrnaes, 2012;Chau and Sam, 2013;Cho, 2014;Jensen, 2008;Kautto, 2002;Kraus et al., 2010;Leitner, 2003;Thévenon, 2011;Verbeek-Oudijk et al., 2014). However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has yet analysed: (i) the extent to which the cluster structures resulting from policy-specific studies overlap with the standard EA classification (hybridisation hypothesis); and (ii) whether the typologies emerging from studies focusing on different policy-areas are consistent or not (incoherence hypothesis). ...
While most comparative studies on welfare systems rely on the Three Worlds of Welfare (TWW) classification by Esping-Andersen as a benchmark, the representativeness of such taxonomy has been questioned due to the profound changes that have characterized welfare systems. A growing body of literature has favored the analysis of welfare typologies limited to sub-areas of welfare provision, as opposed to considering several policy areas at once (welfare state as-a-whole), in response to the concern that welfare services do not necessarily share a common rationale across policy areas. Still, there is little evidence on the extent to which such policy-specific typologies are (i) consistent with the standard welfare classifications (the TWW); and (ii) consistent across policy areas.
In this paper, we perform a meta-analysis of 22 studies which identified welfare typologies in Europe focusing on economically relevant areas such as healthcare and social care policies. We build a novel index of “welfare similarity” to measure the extent to which welfare systems have been grouped together in previous studies, separately for both policy areas. Our findings are twofold: on the one hand, we highlight the coexistence and overlap of multiple regimes in both healthcare and social care policies, which results in a hybridization of the original TWW classification. On the other hand, we find that countries classifications are substantially different between healthcare and social care policies, which provides evidence for the lack of coherence of welfare provision rationales across policy areas. Our results are important for both the academic and policy debate. They suggest that classifications of welfare systems should enhance their focus on the developments in policy-specific welfare areas, which are not necessarily in line with standard classifications. Hence, comparative analysis focusing on policy-specific welfare typologies may prove more informative to policymakers than general classification of the welfare state as-a-whole.
... Nevertheless, in recent decades, Germany has introduced policies that help parents to balance work and family life. Family policies in Germany are still less supportive than those in Scandinavian countries (Boje & Ejrnaes, 2012); however, the German welfare state provides high levels of financial benefits to parents, which strongly alleviate the financial stresses and strains experienced by single parents (Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015). Also, Germany offers subsidized childcare to help parents balance work and family responsibilities. ...
Single, separated mothers report lower levels of psychological well-being than partnered mothers. This study examines whether this penalty in well-being results from the burdens of single parenting or from the stress and strain of union dissolution. The data come from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our sample consists of 1919 childless women and mothers who reported a union dissolution. We used fixed effects models to examine changes in financial satisfaction, family satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction after union dissolution. Our results show that mothers experience steeper declines in financial satisfaction after union dissolution but lower declines in family satisfaction than childless women. Mothers and childless women report almost similar post-separation declines in overall life satisfaction. The results contradict the common notion that low life satisfaction among single mothers can be attributed primarily to the negative consequences of single parenting. The findings suggest that large parts of the life satisfaction penalty experienced by separated single mothers arise from union dissolution rather than from single parenting.
... The theory is that by reducing the incompatibility between work and family responsibilities, family policies can be expected to increase female labour force participation and especially to reduce women's work interruption associated with childbirth or the presence of young children at home. Recent studies in this field have increasingly relied on individual-level data and have examined a variety of labour market outcomes including the impact of policies on female labour force participation (Boje and Ejrnaes, 2012;Nieuwenhuis, Need, and van der Kolk, 2012), mothers' return to work after childbirth (Pronzato, 2009), motherhood penalty (Budig, Misra and Boeckmann, 2012), and gender earnings inequality (Mandel and Semyonov, 2005). Very recent work has also focused on the effect of policies on the employment of specific subgroups of mothers (e.g. ...
... In recent decades, Germany has introduced policies that help parents to balance work and family life. Although family policies in Germany are still less supportive than those in Scandinavian countries (Boje and Ejrnaes 2012), various policies introduced since 2001 have aimed at increasing the provision of public child care and have granted parents the right to reduce their working hours to part-time (Blome 2016). German parents therefore have more resources than their counterparts in the United States, Australia, and many southern European countries to balance work and family responsibilities. ...
Objectives
Work-family conflict (WFC) has severe negative effects on workers’ health and well-being. This study examined whether parents’ WFC also affects the well-being of their children. It was analyzed whether, and to what extent, maternal WFC is associated with child emotional and behavioral problems, and whether this association is mediated by mothers’ use of harsh parenting practices.
Methods
Using data from two waves of the German Family Panel (pairfam) a total of 1781 children and their employed mothers were analyzed using mediation modeling with pooled OLS regressions.
Results
The analyses show that children whose mothers experience higher levels of WFC report higher levels of emotional problems, conduct problems, and hyperactivity. The results also indicate that this association is mediated by mothers’ parenting behavior.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that mothers’ parenting behavior underpins the association between maternal WFC and child behavioral problems: Mothers who experience higher levels of WFC use harsher parenting practices, which negatively affects their children’s well-being.
... However, much less research attention has been devoted to what drives mothers to become entrepreneurs in institutional contexts, such as Sweden, where there are formal institutional arrangements that reduce work-family conflicts. In these contexts, mothers do not need to opt for entrepreneurship and start their own businesses as a fallback employment strategy, or plan B. Sweden is characterized as a welfare regime with an extensive family policy system (Boje and Ejrnaes 2012). The State takes responsibility for children and the elderly, providing publicly subsidized childcare centers, public schools, and universities; paid parental leave for either parent on equal terms (up to 480 days); and "the statutory right to stay home from work (also paid) with sick children for either parents-all financed through the tax system" (Ahl and Nelson 2015: 3). ...
Using data on all businesses started by mothers of young children in Sweden between 2000 and 2014, we explore which factors are associated with entrepreneurship among mothers. We find that being unemployed or being an immigrant is positively associated with business start-up by mothers; however, our findings show that what matters more is the paternity leave taken by the mothers’ partners. These findings suggest that in institutional contexts such as Sweden, gender inequality is not a persistent feature of most households and that women can make career choices by negotiating with their partners who will make use of the parental benefits offered by the government.
... However, much less research attention has been devoted to what drives mothers to become entrepreneurs in institutional contexts, such as Sweden, where there are formal institutional arrangements that reduce work-family conflicts. In these contexts, mothers do not need to opt for entrepreneurship and start their own businesses as a fallback employment strategy, or plan B. Sweden is characterized as a welfare regime with an extensive family policy system (Boje and Ejrnaes 2012). The State takes responsibility for children and the elderly, providing publicly subsidized childcare centers, public schools, and universities; paid parental leave for either parent on equal terms (up to 480 days); and "the statutory right to stay home from work (also paid) with sick children for either parents-all financed through the tax system" (Ahl and Nelson 2015: 3). ...
... Welfare states and welfare regimes-as institutions that represent specific combinations of policies and that are rooted in distinct ideologies such as social democratic, conservative, and liberal-would therefore create systematic variation in public support for welfare state policies (Esping-Andersen 1990). In addition, the gender perspective recommends taking into account how care arrangements and the division of paid and unpaid work between men and women are institutionalized across welfare states, in order to understand leave policy preferences in each context (Boje and Ejrnaes 2012;Kremer 2006;Leitner 2003). We therefore expect the national context to be associated with what people believe is good parenting, who they think should provide social care, and whether the state, the employer, or the family should bear the costs. ...
This study analyses preferences regarding leave length, gender division of leave, and leave financing in four countries with different welfare-state and leave regimes. Embedded in a gender perspective, institutional, self-interest, and ideational theoretical approaches are used to explore the factors shaping individuals' preferences (ISSP 2012 data). Findings show dramatic crosscountry differences, suggesting the institutional dimension is most strongly related to leave policy preferences. Self-interest and values concerning gender relations and state responsibility are also important correlates. The study identifies mismatches between leave preferences, entitlements, and uptake, with implications for policy reform and the gendered division of parenting.
... Institutionalist researchers disagree about whether the best way to understand the impact of the welfare state is as a complex combination of different features best measured with the help of typologies (e.g. Blossfeld and Drobnič 2001a;Boje and Ejrnaes 2012;Stier et al. 2001) or whether single institutions have an influence on female labor force participation independent from the regime type (e.g. Gornick et al. 1998;Nieuwenhuis et al. 2012). ...
The central aim of this thesis is to examine whether cultural factors contribute to the explanation of differences in female labor force participation in international comparison. Previous research explaining these differences usually relies on modernization theory and explains differences in female labor force participation with different levels of modernization and related social changes like educational expansion. However, this approach has failed to explain the strong differences in female labor force participation between countries in general and between countries with similar levels of development in particular. Institutionalist approaches have tried to solve the paradox of differences in female labor force participation among highly developed countries but cannot explain the strong variation of female labor force participation among developing countries where only rudimentary welfare systems exist. This has raised the question whether the cultural approach is more suited to explain female labor force participation in an international comparison
... In relation to objective well-being, the studies conducted to this effect have shown that family policy is a good example of a government response to family changes (Booje and Ejrnaes 2012;Crompton and Lyonette 2006;McGinnity and Whelan 2009;Stier et al. 2012), the latter helping, in turn, to substantially improve living conditions and child wellbeing, and reduce inequality. There are well-known papers on the positive impact which early childhood education has on high public return, the reduction of education inequality and improvement of children's skills and competences in the life cycle stages (Currie 1998;Esping Andersen 2002;Heckman and Masterov 2007;Heckman 2011;OECD 2012;Rolnick and Grunewald 2003;Waldfogel 2006;Waldfogel and Wasbrook 2011). ...
The article proposes an innovative analyse for cross-national differences in the subjective child well-being introducing new indicators and measures. This dimension addresses the issue of welfare support to parents and child early education. The question of this research is to what extend family policies can explain the variability of subjective child well-being components in different European countries. Based on this question, the two objective of this proposal are: (1) to review the existing literature with respect to conceptualization, measurement, and correlates of children’s subjective well-being, with a special emphasis on the context of family policies and family well-being in different European welfare states, and (2) to analyse the relation between these policies and subjective child well-being. In order to get these aims we have elaborated two indexes: the index of child subjective well-being and family policy index. Data for HBSC (Health Behaviour in School-aged Children) for the first index and data from OECD Family Database is used to build these indicators. We found that the index of child subjective well-being is comparatively higher in those countries where family policies are more generous in the areas of preschool education, family services, family spending and duration of paid parental leave.
... This phenomenon is often referred to as the feminisation of the labour force (Jenson et al., 1988). During the post-war period, social and family policies were designed and targeted at protecting the male breadwinners who had lost their income because of sickness, unemployment, etc. (Boje and Ejrnaes, 2012). Today, family policies are required to reflect a more diversified structure of social and family needs. ...
Purpose
Given the reality that working mothers experience difficulties in achieving work-family balance because of the social restrictions that arise from parenting combined with career goals, this paper aims to explore the various coping strategies that are used by working mothers in the cities of London (Great Britain) and Lagos (Nigeria).
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 72 mothers who worked in banks in London (Great Britain) and Lagos (Nigeria). Thematic analysis and investigator triangulation are used.
Findings
The findings reveal various coping strategies used by working mothers in the cities of Lagos and London. The paper also unearths the efficiency and the shortcomings of the use of au pairs among British working mothers and the similarities and disparities in terms of such use compared to the traditional use of housekeepers in Nigeria.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the existing work–family balance literature by exploring the coping strategies of working mothers because of sociocultural and institutional differences in Great Britain and Nigeria.
... The present study was set up to analyze patterns of labor market participation and their determinants after the birth of a woman's first child in one of the Nordic countries, Finland. In contrast to the other Nordic countries, the Finnish system of family leave has been characterized as being among the least flexible, leading to relatively long periods out of the labor market (Datta Gupta et al., 2008;Rønsen & Sundström, 2002; see also Boje & Ejrnaes, 2012). In Finland, there are restrictions for taking family leave parttime, saving leave for later use, and working between leave periods (Salmi & Lammi-Taskula, 2014). ...
There is a lot of evidence that pre-birth employment and access to parental leave are important predictors of mothers’ labor market attachment after childbirth. This register-based study from Finland aimed to analyze in which ways the type of job contract (none, temporary, or permanent) at the start of maternity leave predicts labor market attachment in the long term. The mother cohorts were followed up for 11 years. Labor market attachment was analyzed with latent class growth analysis, which makes it possible to identify subgroups with differing track and level of development. Lack of employment and having a temporary contract at baseline were associated with slower and weaker labor market attachment irrespective of mother’s age, socioeconomic status, and subsequent births. These findings suggest that the polarization of women into the core and periphery of the labor market structure tends to continue after the birth of the first child. Temporary employment might be an obstacle for having rights for a job-protected family leave and have long-term consequences on the continuity of employment and the division of paid and unpaid work in the family.
... Nevertheless, Finland has been placed into a different family policy model than Sweden and Denmark (extensive family policy model), and into the same model (long parental leave family policy model) with Austria, Germany, and several eastern European countries including Hungary (cf. [22]), despite the much higher availability and more reasonable cost of formal day care in Finland than in these other countries [30]. Moreover, Finland has been placed in the same category as such countries as Belgium and France [31]. ...
It is generally believed that long periods of childcare at home deteriorate mothers’ occupational careers. This study examined mothers’ experiences regarding negative career consequences of full-time care of children at home, and of part-time work due to childcare. The focus was on Finland, a country that provides all mothers a financially compensated, longer-term childcare leave linked with unrestricted access to day care services. Experiences of Finnish mothers were compared with experiences of mothers in 11 other European countries. The data were based on European Social Survey (ESS) round 2, conducted in 2004 and 2005. In all of the studied countries, the majority of mothers assessed that taking care of children at home had not harmed their occupational careers. There was, however, a clear cross-country variation. Perceived career consequences for both types of care at home were least common in Finland. In most of the investigated countries, longer times spent with children at home increased the probability to perceive negative career consequences. In Finland, the difference was relatively small. Thus, as long as the focus is on mothers’ perceptions, the longer-term childcare leave does not seem to markedly deteriorate Finnish mothers’ careers.
Purpose
The authors aim to explore the link between the gender composition of occupations and women's access to managerial positions in four societal contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
Using EU-LFS data for 2015, the authors measure the relative gender equality performance of France, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK regarding women's access to managerial positions, defined as levels 1 and 2 of the 2008 ISCO classification coupled with the exercise of managerial responsibilities.
Findings
While gender-mixed working environments offer the largest number of managerial positions, they are also where women are least likely to reach such a position. Overall, except in Switzerland, women fare best in male-dominated occupations. Women do not appear to fare worse than men in female-dominated occupations, except in France.
Research limitations/implications
The findings question the relevance of policies aimed simply at reducing occupational gender segregation without providing safeguards against the deleterious effects that gender mixing may have on women's career advancement.
Originality/value
The disparities between countries found here show that individual career advancement towards a managerial position may be driven by the social policies, gender ideology and institutions of the societal context. Examining how the societal dimensions involved in the poor performance of women in France and Switzerland are likely to differ sheds light on mechanisms behind the gender gap in management.
Due to the profound changes that have characterized welfare systems, the representativeness of standard welfare classifications such as Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of Welfare (TWW) have been questioned. In response to concerns that welfare services do not share a common rationale across policy areas, new typologies focused on sub-areas of welfare provision have been introduced. Still, there is little evidence on whether such policy-specific typologies are (i) consistent with the standard TWW classifications; and (ii) consistent across policy areas.
We reviewed 22 recent studies which identified welfare typologies in 12 European countries focusing on economically relevant areas such as healthcare and social care. We build novel indices of “welfare similarity” to measure the extent to which welfare systems have been grouped together in previous studies. Our findings are twofold: first, healthcare and social care policies are characterized by the coexistence and overlap of multiple regimes, i.e., a hybridization of the original TWW taxonomy. Second, countries classifications are substantially different between healthcare and social care, which highlights the lack of coherence in welfare systems rationales across policy areas. Our findings suggest that comparative analyses of welfare systems should narrow their focus on policy-specific areas, which may prove more informative than general classifications of welfare states.
Purpose
While women in most European societies still carry the largest burden in caring for the family, there is also an important unrealised learning interest among women. This has an impact on women's labour market and career opportunities. This paper aims at analysing empirically the role of family obligations in women's ability to realise their learning interests and how this differs across societal and institutional contexts across Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper makes use of the second wave of Adult Education Survey from 2011, including data from 22 European countries. The article focuses on women aged 25–55 – an age group most affected by parental obligations. Logistic regression models are used to compare the effect that children in the household have on women's learning barriers across country groups of different family policy arrangements.
Findings
The results confirm empirically the situational nature of family barriers to learning as they grow and decline depending on the age of children. However, the level of intensity and the period when family-related barriers remain relevant for women vary across European countries.
Originality/value
This paper provides new insights into how women's caring obligations shape their labour market and career opportunities, focussing on the ability to take up adult learning. Involving data from 22 countries, including Eastern European countries, provides a broad look into the differing contexts shaping women's opportunities across Europe.
Purpose
The objective of the study is to identify the themes of “family friendly practices” and to perform a literature review. The research aims to identify the emerging trends in the area of “family friendly practices” by carrying out an exhaustive literature review.
Design/methodology/approach
The study synthesizes the literature between the years 2010 and 2019. First of all, 150 research articles were identified by keyword search, bibliography and citation search, out of which 57 research articles were selected on the basis of the most sound theoretical background and maximum literature contribution. The citation analysis method was performed on these studies in order to study the journals, authors by using Google Scholar, ResearchGate, the international database Science Citation Index and SCImago Journal Ranking.
Findings
The author citation count shows that the research topic is still getting recognition and the research in this area is increasing. The finding of the research is that the current research in family-friendly practices has focused mainly on seven topics: availability and usability of family-friendly policy, job satisfaction, organizational performance, supervisor or manager support, work–life conflict, employee turnover employee retention and women’s employment.
Originality/value
The study may provide valuable inputs to the HRD practitioners, managers, research scholars, to understand the recent trends in the field of family-friendly policy. As per the best knowledge of the author, this is the first study on family-friendly practices using citation analysis.
This article examines how employees consolidate the spheres of work and family in three countries with different family policy constellations: Sweden, Germany and Great Britain. The analyses are based on data from the International Social Survey Programme, 2015. Building on family policy typologies, the study demonstrates how gender and family and employment demands interact with the institutional setting regarding how people make employment trade-offs. The results show that (1) employees in Sweden make the fewest employment trade-offs, (2) family demands exert a gendered effect on employment trade-offs in Germany and (3) employment demands have both similar and distinct gender effects across countries. The article contributes to the literature by showing how individual characteristics interact with family policy constellations. The findings provide little support for a welfare-state paradox regarding family demands but some support with regard to employment demands.
This paper examines the coherence between mothers' work-family attitudes and behaviors using data from the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain, Norway and Spain from ISSP (1994, 2002 and 2012). Findings show that mother's attitudes are more constrained than Hakim's preference theory suggests: i) Between one and two thirds of mothers experience inconsistency between preferences and employment. (ii) Norwegian and Czech mothers' agency has increased in this period, while in Germany and Spain results are mixed. (iii) The options of British mothers with preschool children have worsened. (iv) Norway currently has the greatest coherence between preferences and employment trajectories. Link to abstract: https://academic.oup.com/sp/article-abstract/27/1/97/5184845. FULL TEXT UNDER REQUEST.
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar las políticas de protección a la
familia en España. Para ello, tras justificar la relevancia de este tipo de
actuaciones y sus implicaciones económicas y sociales, se sintetizan las
principales aportaciones de la literatura.
A continuación, se sitúa a España en el ámbito de la OCDE y la Unión
Europea. La atención se centra en el gasto público en prestaciones económicas,
bienes y servicios para las familias y los beneficios fiscales.
En este contexto, se repasan las ayudas estatales en España, tanto en
lo que referencia a las prestaciones y bonificaciones económicas de la
Seguridad Social, como a las ventajas fiscales y otras ayudas es tatales.
En el tercer bloque del informe se analizan los beneficios fiscales a escala
autonómica en el Impuesto sobre la Renta de las Personas Físicas
IRPF, señalando las principales actuaciones e importes consignados en
cada una de las acciones de protección a la familia; y se estudia la situación
autonómica del Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales y
Actos Jurídicos Documentados y cómo afecta a las familias.
El trabajo finaliza con una serie de propuestas para la mejora de las
políticas de protección a la familia en España.
This anthology maps and analyses current trends within the area of family policy and outlines some possible challenges that the Nordic welfare states will soon be facing. Over several decades the Nordic welfare model has been characterised by the notion that children are not only the private responsibility of parents, but also a responsibility to be shared with society. Moreover, the Nordic welfare model goes hand-in-hand with the women's movement by offering opportunities for women, as well as men, to also participate in education and employment. The question remains how more recent trends such as New Public Management principles and increased focus on children's positions and rights affect family policies in the Nordic countries? The authors, who come from all five Nordic countries, discuss the following topics: issues related to family demographics, children's position in society and the family, the children's well-being, care policies in relation to both children and the elderly, reconciliation of work and family life, and policies related to gender equality. The anthology is one of several outputs from the recent Nordic research collaboration, Reassessing the Nordic Welfare Model, which began in 2007.
Within developing countries, studies addressing the effects of maternity benefits on fertility, infant/child health, and women's labor force participation are limited and provide contradictory findings. Yet, knowledge regarding the implementation of maternity provisions is essential, as such policies could significantly improve women and children's well-‐being. We add to this literature by using fixed effects panel regression from 1999 through 2012 across 121 developing countries to explore whether different types of maternity leave policies affect infant/child mortality rates, fertility, and women's labor force participation, and whether those effects are shaped by disparities in GDP per Capita and Secondary School Enrollment. Our findings demonstrate: 1) both infant and child mortality rates are expected to decline in countries that institute any leave policy, policies that last 12 weeks or longer, and policies that increase in duration and payment as a percentage of total annual salary, 2) fertility is expected to decline in countries that have higher weekly paid compensation, 3) maternity leave provisions decrease fertility and infant/child mortality rates most in countries with lower GDP per capita and countries with middle range secondary enrollment rates, and 4) labor force participation does not increase. Our results suggest that policy makers must consider the duration, compensation, and goals (addressing fertility versus mortality rates) of a policy alongside a country's economic development and secondary school enrollment when determining which maternity leave provisions to apply within developing-‐country contexts.
The reforms of welfare systems, which happened in different countries, have generated more differences at the local authority, thus the improvement of welfare organization has followed specific development methods providing different services for the citizenship living in the same country. The welfare classification research at cross-national level have not considered the heterogeneity of national welfare system, as underlined by Bertin's (2012b) research, based on an Italian case study, which identified that the Italian welfare system could be classify in seven different welfare regimes. Thus, this analysis, using the same data of Bertin's (2012b) analysis and applying a different cluster analysis method (K-mean), attempts to confirm the Bertin's (2012b) classification. The results corroborate some models of welfare systems identified by previous research but other cluster groups suggest that it is useful to conduct deep analysis in order to distinguish some more welfare system features.
The UNRISD programme has considered not only the future of the old core welfare states in Western Europe, North America and the Antipodes, but also trends in welfare state development in ex-communist Eastern Europe, East Asia and Latin America. Except for a handful of cases, the dominant picture is that of a frozen welfare state landscape. Resistance to change is to be expected long established policies become institutionalized and create groups with a vested interest in their perpetuation. Continental Europe is the clearest case of impasse, while Australia and Scandinavia represent change via negotiation. At the other extreme, in Chile and the ex-communist nations, wholesale change has occurred against the backdrop of the collapse or destruction of the existing organizational structure. In between these poles are countries, like Britain or the US, in which a more gradual erosion occurred in tandem with weakened trade unionism. -from Author
This paper surveys the debate regarding Esping-Andersen's typology of welfare states and reviews the modified or alternative typologies ensuing from this debate. We confine ourselves to the classifications which have been developed by Esping-Andersen's critics in order to cope with the following alleged shortcomings of his typology: (1) the misspecification of the Mediterranean welfare states as immature Continental ones; (2) the labelling of the Antipodean welfare states as belonging to the `liberal' regime type; (3) a neglect of the gender-dimension in social policy. We reconstruct several typologies of welfare states in order to establish, first, whether real welfare states are quite similar to others or whether they are rather unique specimens, and, second, whether there are three ideal-typical worlds of welfare capitalism or more. We conclude that real welfare states are hardly ever pure types and are usually hybrid cases; and that the issue of ideal-typical welfare states cannot be satisfactorily answered given the lack of formal theorizing and the still inconclusive outcomes of comparative research. In spite of this conclusion there is plenty of reason to continue to work on and with the original or modified typologies.
The purpose of this article is to bring social care services into the domain of comparative social policy research. The reason why it is important for social care services to be incor porated into the debate is that they represent an expanding component of the welfare state; that they are important for women; and that there are major differences between different countries in social care services. We have defined social care services as a specific way of increasing the autonomy of both care pro viders and care receivers.
Western welfare states were built during the postwar years, with one key objective: to protect family (male) breadwinners against the consequences of losing their ability to extract an income from the labor market. Structures of social risk, however, have changed dramatically since then, so that current social risks include precarious employment, long-term unemployment, being a working poor, single parenthood, or inability to reconcile work and family life. Changes in structures of social risk have resulted in the adaptation of welfare states only in the Nordic countries but much less in continental and southern Europe. To account for this divergence in social policy trajectories, this article argues that the reorientation of the Nordic welfare state was possible because new social risks emerged before the maturation of the postwar welfare states. The argument is demonstrated through comparative statistical analysis relating the timing of key socioeconomic developments to current levels of spending in relevant policies.
How can the marked national differences in the rates of women's participation in the labour market, and in their involvement in part-time work, be explained? While institutional conditions, for example childcare policy, can have a contextual importance, these are not adequate for understanding women's different orientations and practices in combining paid and unpaid work. Rather, we must examine the idea that the social practice of women is heavily influenced by predominant norms and values about the 'correct' gender division of labour. Culture must therefore be included in any explanation of cross-national differences in employment patterns. This is the task of this paper. After briefly examining the limitations of pre-existing explanations, the paper goes on to present an alternative theorization which conceptualizes the links between gendered cultures, structures and action. This new theoretical approach is then applied to a comparative analysis of changing employment patterns in Finland, Germany and The Netherlands.
This report tries to explain observed changes in fertility rates across OECD countries, with an emphasis on socio-economic considerations. It aims to extend the understanding of fertility-related behaviours in different ways: first, by explaining recent developments in fertility rates and their relationships to other social drivers; second, by developing and testing new and expanded models to explain the cross-country variation in fertility rates due to labour markets, social and fiscal policies, and individual characteristics; third, by exploring which polices, through their effects on particular variables at micro and macro levels, have the biggest effect on fertility rates.
Ce rapport essaye d’expliquer les évolutions observées dans les taux de fécondité dans les pays de l’OCDE, l’accent étant mis sur un angle socio-économique. Il tend à faire comprendre les comportements liés à la fécondité de plusieurs manières : premièrement, en expliquant les évolutions récentes des taux de fécondité et leur relation avec les autres facteurs sociaux ; deuxièmement, en développant et en testant des modèles nouveaux et élargis afin d’expliquer les différences des taux de fécondité observées dans les pays en fonction des caractéristiques du marché du travail, des politiques sociales et fiscales et des caractéristiques individuelles ; troisièmement, en essayant d’identifier les politiques qui ont la plus grande incidence sur les taux de fécondité de par l’effet qu’elles ont sur des variables particulières aux niveaux micro et macro.
The Golden Age of post‐war capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe that the emerging post‐industrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such as tertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. This book takes a second, more sociological and institutional look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What stands out as a result is that there is post‐industrial diversity rather than convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that holds the key as to what kind of post‐industrial model will emerge, and to how evolving trade‐offs will be managed. Twentieth‐century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that now are invalid. Hence, to grasp better what drives today's economy, it is necessary to begin with its social foundations. After an Introduction, the book is arranged in three parts: I, Varieties of Welfare Capitalism (four chapters); II, The New Political Economy (two chapters); and III, Welfare Capitalism Recast? (two chapters).
Modern welfare states developed primarily to meet the 'old social risks' that confront the mass of the population during a standard industrial life course - retirement pensions, health care services, sickness and disability provision. Most analysis of the current wave of reforms focusses on these areas, and tends to emphasise retrenchment, restructuring, and decommodification. This book deals with the 'new social risks' that have now emerged alongside old social risks from changes in family life and work patterns - needs for child and elder care, new rights for women in relation to paid work, measures to ease the transition into paid work, particularly for unskilled people, and the problems of social exclusion arising for some groups from policies like pension privatisation. It offers an original approach of the implications for national and EU level social policy-making and contributes to theoretical work in this area. The detailed national case studies are written by national experts and are based on analysis of policy during the past 15 years and more than 250 interviews with key policy actors. The book is organised in a common framework that enables comparison of the significance of different national welfare state regimes and political institutions.The book shows that (1) The recognition of new social risks and the structuring of policies to meet them are constrained by existing patterns of old social risk provision; (2) The politics of new social risks differs from that of old social risks. Most people are aware of needs in relation to the latter, leading to widespread pressure for more provision. The groups affected by new social risks are smaller, less politically cohesive, and less able to push for change; (3) New social risks policies offer the opportunity for governments to 'transform vice into virtue' by expanding the labour force and encouraging previously dependent groups (disabled and unemployed people) into productive work. For this reason, such policies are at the forefront of the EU level welfare reform agenda.
The Scandinavian countries are often assumed to constitute a coherent and unique social service model characterized by a comparatively high level of universalism and a strong capacity to defamilialize care responsibilities. In examining whether we really can identify such a model when comparing current social service systems, social services in the Scandinavian countries are contrasted with their counterparts in three continental European countries. The resulting data indicate that only Denmark complies with the image of the Scandinavian social service model. Both Norway and Sweden deviate significantly. Norwegian childcare services and Swedish elderlycare services do not stand out as particularly universalistic or defamilializing compared with those of other Western European countries. Given these findings, it may be questioned whether it is reasonable to speak of a `Scandinavian social service model'.
This article explores how parents in couple families reconcile employment and child-care, and how far the current emphasis of EU-level policy on enhancing the formal provision of child-care fits with patterns and/or preferences in Western European member states. We use European Social Survey data from 2004—05 on working patterns and preferences, and on child-care use and preferences regarding the amount of formal provision. We find that working hours remain a very important dimension of work/family reconciliation practices, with large differences in both patterns and preferences. There is very little evidence of convergence towards a dual, full-time worker model family outside the Nordic countries, although the balance between the hours which men and women spend in paid work is becoming less unequal. The part that kin (partners and grandparents) play in providing child-care remains important in all but three countries, and, for the most part, mothers report that they are content with the amount of formal child-care available. We suggest that work/family reconciliation measures need to encompass a more extended policy package, the components of which are likely to be specific to member states.
This article tries to identify some common traits of the welfare states of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece, with special attention to institutional and political aspects. The main traits identified are: (1) a highly fragmented and 'corporatist' income maintenance system, displaying a marked internal polarization: peaks of generosity (e.g. as regards pensions) accompanied by macroscopic gaps of protection; (2) the departure from corporatist traditions in the field of health care and the establishment (at least partially) of National Health Services based on universalistic principles; (3) a low degree of state penetration of the welfare sphere and a highly collusive mix between public and non public actors and institutions; (4) the persistence of clientelism and the formation - in some cases - of fairly elaborated 'patronage machines' for the selective distribution of cash subsidies. A number of factors are then discussed to explain these peculiarities of the Southern model. Among these, the historical weakness of the state apparatus in this area of Europe; the preminence of parties as main actors for interest articulation and aggregation; ideological polarizations and, in particular, the presence of a maximalist and divided Left. In the last section, the article addresses the severe problems which are currently confronting - in various degrees - the four southern European welfare states. Both the exogenous challenges, connected with market globalization and EMU, and the endogenous challenges (which as rapid ageing, mass unemployment, etc.) are discussed. It is concluded that the adaptation of the southern model to these challenges will be a very difficult process in the years ahead, in both social and political terms.
This article examines the trends in family policies in 22 industrialized countries since 1970. Based on time-series of indicators of cash benefits and support for working parents, it examines the hypothesis of convergence in national family policies. Results suggest that although all countries have increased their support for families since 1970, and all countries have adapted their policies to reflect the new demographic and economic realities of families, there has been no cross-national convergence. Results even suggest a divergence as captured by the growing cross-national dispersion of the family policy indicators. Results are thus in line with other studies of welfare states which have concluded that cross-national differences persist in spite of global macro-level factors.
This paper considers parents empoyment laws in Italy, starting with the very first one in 1902. The legislative development is comparised with Italian history in twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a particular attention to the Mussolinian age (1922-1943), the Constitution and 1975 Family Law. Social environment is also analyzed in this complex situation.
This article focuses on the caring function of the family in child care and elderly care and follows a comparative as well as a gender perspective. It aims at developing a gender-sensitive theoretical concept of familialism which allows to identify real world variations of familialism. Four ideal types of familialism are distinguished and care policies in the EU member states are classified according to them. It can be shown that countries cluster differently for different care policies. In addition, structural gender effects of the four ideal types of familialism are reflected upon. The empirical analysis of paid parental leave in nine EU member states gives an example of gendered and de-gendered variants of familialism.
This article examines the role of family policy in shaping mothers’ choice between work and care and the perceived occupational consequences of that choice. A central question concerns how parental/maternal leave and childcare policies affect the occupational consequences for mothers who spend time on full-time caring. Using comparative data from the second round of the 2004/05 European Social Survey, the analysis shows that the duration of career interruption due to care-giving and different care policies influence mothers’ subjective feelings about caring for children having negative consequences for their careers. On the one hand, our findings confirm the hypothesis that long-term absence from the labour market due to full-time care has negative consequences for women's occupational careers. On the other hand, our findings show that countries with well paid leave schemes combined with access to high quality childcare reduce the perceived negative occupational consequences of the time spent on full-time care. This is the case independently of the duration of the career interruption due to care-giving.
The paper starts out by identifying a substantial increase in the use of welfare state typologies within comparative studies. This has developed to a degree where many authors take it for granted that the world consists of a limited number of well-defined welfare regimes. This discussion took off in 1990 and it is expected to continue as an important dimension of welfare and social policy research long into the next millennium. It is shown that the idea of ordering welfare states according to ideal-typical models dates back to the late 1950s and was elaborated substantially during the early 1970s, though rather unnoticed. The publication of Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism in 1990 is identified as the starting point for what has now become a whole academic industry, here entitled the Welfare Modelling Business. Different typologies with different degrees of differentiation are discussed: should we consider welfare capitalism to come in two, three, four or more models? Though the differentiation into regimes is widely recognized, there have, of course, been many discussions about problems and shortcomings. Two major issues are elaborated: the one-sided focus on social insurance provisions and the simultaneous neglect of personal social services; and the parallel one-sided focus on state and market and the neglect of civil societal institutions such as family and networks. The paper concludes that welfare typologizing must take into account the kinds of programmes analysed: context matters.
To usefully evaluate the extent of equal opportunity demands innovative methodology. The authors select indicators of the relative opportunities of men and women (the 'gender gap'), including differences in employment, wages, and the sharing of unpaid work; and also indicators of women's absolute situation in the labour market. These indicators are then estimated empirically for 15 Member States, with highly revealing results. To close the circle, the main determinants of equal opportunity are posited - including the rate of economic growth, tax systems, working-time regimes, childcare facilities and parental leave arrangements. Seeing country performance in that light produces compelling lessons for policy.
The role of gender as a source of social stratification within and between welfare states is increasingly being paid attention to in the welfare state regimes debate. Defamilisation has emerged as a potentially important concept in this context, as it enables the comparison and classification of welfare states in terms of how they facilitate female autonomy and economic independence from the family. However, the methodology used, or the understanding of the concept, limits existing defamilisation typologies. These typologies have therefore been unable to provide an accurate examination of welfare state variation using this concept and, indeed, have in some ways undermined and devalued the usefulness of defamilisation. This article uses cluster analysis to build upon previous research and resurrect the concept of defamilisation. In contrast to existing work in this area, the analysis produces a five-fold typology of welfare state regimes. This typology differs in many ways from existing models of welfare state regimes, although some core countries emerge as regime ideal types. The article concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of cluster analysis, and defamilisation, for welfare state modelling and future research in this area.
The Golden Age of postwar capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe the the emerging postindustrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such as tertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies takes a second, more sociological and more institutional, look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What, as a result, stands out is postindustrial diversity, not convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that hold the key as to what kind of postindustrial model will emerge, and to how evolving tradeoffs will be managed. Twentieth-century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that, now, are invalid. Hence, to better grasp what drives today's economy, we must begin with its social foundations. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/0198742002/toc.html
The welfare state is at the heart of the institutional structure of all European societies. Yet there are major variations
across countries due to different historical developments. The origins of social policy date back more than 120 years, but
the real expansion of the welfare state did not take place until the end of World War II. In the 1950s, social programmes
in most western European countries entered into a historically unique period of growth, which lasted until the 1970s (Flora
1986–1988). Since the early 1980s, however, the dominating issues of the welfare state debate have been crisis and retrenchment
(Pierson 2001). Today, the expansion of state welfare has come to an end in most countries, but the core institutions and
features of the welfare state have survived (Kuhnle 2000) and even been stabilized and consolidated. After more than 20 years
of crisis debates and retrenchment policies, the welfare state has successfully adapted to domestic as well as international
pressures (Castles 2004) and is supported by the vast majority of citizens in all European nations. The role of the state
in social security, on the other hand, has changed during this time.
Cluster analysis refers to a family of methods for identifying cases with distinctive characteristics in heterogeneous samples and combining them into homogeneous groups. This approach provides a great deal of information about the types of cases and the distributions of variables in a sample. This paper considers cluster analysis as a quantitative complement to the traditional linear statistics that often characterize community psychology research. Cluster analysis emphasizes diversity rather than central tendency. This makes it a valuable tool for a wide range of familiar problems in community research. A number of these applications are considered here, including the assessment of change over time, network composition, network density, person-setting relationships, and community diversity. A User''s Guide section is included, which outlines the major decisions involved in a basic cluster analyses. Despite difficulties associated with the identification of optimal cluster solutions, carefully planned, theoretically informed application of cluster analysis has much to offer community researchers.
This paper builds on the idea that any further development of the concept of 'welfare regime' must incorporate the relationship between unpaid as well as paid work and welfare. Consideration of the privateldomestic is crucial to a gendered understanding of welfare because historically women have typically gained entitlements by virtue of their dependent status within the family as wives and mothers. The paper suggests that the idea of the male-breadwinner family model has served historically to cut across established typologies of welfare regimes, and further that the model has been modified in different ways and to different degrees in particular countries.
Throughout Europe, the family is still an important provider of care, but welfare state policies of individual countries may support and/or supplement the family in different ways, generating different social and economic outcomes. This article compares and categorizes care strategies for children and elderly persons in different member states of the European Union, while also taking into account the varied modalities for providing care, like leave arrangements, financial provisions, and social services. In EU countries, care regimes function as “social joins” ensuring complementarity between economic and demographic institutions and processes. As these processes and institutions change, they provide impetus for care regimes to change as well. However, because ideas and ideals about care are at the core of individual national identities, care regimes also act as independent incentive structures that impinge on patterns of women's labor market participation and fertility.
ESS Round 4: European Social Survey Round 4 Data
- European Social Survey
Family Life and Family Policies in Europe
- F.-X Kaufmann
- A Kuisten
- H.-J Schulze
- K.P. Strohmeir
Babies and Bosses – Reconciling Work and Family Life: A Synthesis of Findings for OECD Countries
- OECD
OECD Family Database
- OECD
Gender and the evolution of European social policy
- I Ostner
- J. Lewis
Welfare regimes and the gender. division of labour in cross-national perspective - theoretical framework and empirical results
- B Pfau-Effinger
Is there really a Scandinavian social service model? A comparison of childcare and elderly care in six European countries
- D. Rauch
European Social Policy: Between Fragmentation and Integration
- I Ostner
- J Lewis
Trends and determinants of fertility rates: the role of politics
- A C D'addio
- M M Ercole