Welfare states and inequality: Institutional designs and distributive outcome

Comparative studies on inequality have suffered from severe methodological problems, which mean that issues related to the causes of cross-national variation in inequality remain unresolved. In comparative welfare state research, the preoccupation with expenditure data has also meant that the welfare state itself has remained a black box. By examining new comparative data on social policy institutions and income inequality among different population groups, this study provides a more precise empirical basis for evaluating different, and divergent, theories on the welfare state and equality. Three cases will be used as illustrations: family policy and child poverty, unemployment benefits and poverty among working aged, and old-age pensions and poverty among the elderly. The results suggest that the key for understanding the effect of the welfare state lies in the institutional design—in the level and distribution of social rights. The importance of the welfare state for social stratification deserves to be given more attention by sociological research in the future.     

Welfare Attitudes and Social Expenditure: Do Regimes Shape Public Opinion?

This article examines the link between regime types, social expenditure, and welfare attitudes. By employing data on 19 countries taken from the World Values Survey, the main aim is to see to what degree the institutions of a country affect the attitudes of its citizens. According to Esping-Andersen (The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990) welfare regimes can be classified into Liberal, Conservative, and Social Democratic categories. With this as my point of departure, I put forward two research questions: the first concerns the direct influence of regime type on people’s attitudes; the second seeks to trace the contours of the regime types by arguing that both social expenditure and welfare attitudes are products of a country’s institutional arrangements. These questions are answered through regression modelling and by examining the interplay between welfare attitudes, social expenditure, and welfare regimes. First, we see that there are significant differences in aggregated attitudes between countries belonging to the Liberal and the Conservative regimes, with the former’s citizens holding more rightist views than those of the latter. This is explained by the history and organization of welfare benefits of the two variations of Esping-Andersen’s classification. Second, by graphing welfare attitudes against social expenditure the outline of the three regime types mentioned above may be seen. Similar correspondence is not found with regards to an Eastern European category. All in all, this study renders some support for the regime argument.     

Settler Welfare on Tropical Forest Frontiers in Latin America

Because of urgent concerns to protect tropical forests in Latin America, social science research on them has been generally ‘forest-centred.’ This forest-centred approach considers the people who inhabit the frontier as agents of land use change and forest conversion focusing on how their actions affect forest cover. Welfare indicators for forest frontier populations (income, education, health, access to basic services) are addressed only incidentally in terms of how they influence land use. ‘People’ centred research, which asks questions from the perspective of human welfare such as, ‘Are frontier settlers better off than they were before?’ or ‘What kind of socio-economic impacts does frontier life have on the people who live there?” and “How can their lives be improved?,” has been less common. As a result, we know much about the impacts, especially adverse impacts, which settler activity on the frontier has on forest cover but little about the impacts settlement has on settlers, themselves. This paper attempts to shift discussion towards these kinds of questions and a more people centred approach by reviewing existing research that directly addresses the welfare of settlers in tropical forest frontiers in Latin America. We also review research that touches on settler welfare by considering the concept of ‘sustainability’ on the forest frontier and stakes out a comprise position between ‘forest’ and ‘people’ centred questions or concerns. Settler welfare is defined primarily in economic terms. Household income, wealth, and agricultural productivity are interpreted a proxies for welfare in most cases. We also consider welfare in terms of access to basic services (health and education) and living conditions. We particularly consider how settler welfare indicators may change over time on the frontier. Tropical forests, defined as tropical, moist, broadleaf forests, are the main ecological setting of interest. These forests are generally the largest unoccupied areas in many Latin American countries and are thus, also the main ‘agricultural frontier’ or areas of new settlement by small farmers.     

Labor force composition and underemployment trends, 1969–1980

Underemployment indicators are both ‘objective’ indicators of individual well-being and social welfare and ‘normative’ indicators for programmatic use. Components of an underemployment indicator framework, the Labor Utilization Framework (LUF), are operationally defined and shown to be closely related to a family of proposed alternatives. Using CPS data, a 12-year time series of LUF indicators is developed for the U.S. labor force and its key subgroups. The across-time heterogeneity of the labor force is analyzed in relation to a ‘basic’ demographic group-by-LUF-by-time contingency, showing how the complexity of labor force structure that emerges from a multi-state indicator of underemployment can be rigorously modeled. Standard loglinear models, which focus on the temporal aspects of data from repeated cross-sectional surveys, provide the analytic technique. Changes in the demographic composition of the labor force account for about 30% of the overall period variability, and age structure has made the most important contribution to the compositional change.     

欠发达地区农村居民社会福利认知的影响因素研究——以贵州省为例

对贵州省684名农村成年居民的实证研究结果显示,农村居民在社会问题归因上的社会归因意识较为强烈,在政策优先意识上倾向于经济优先意识,其福利需求意识比较强烈但福利权利意识尚较为淡薄,这表明低水平实践的社会福利在当前欠发达地区的农村社会话语序列中尚未处于重要位置。经济发展水平、社会福利制度背景、文化传统和人口结构特征等不同层次因素对农村居民的社会福利认知均具有显著的影响。     

Whatever Happened to Social Indicators in Africa? Whatever Happened Indeed! A Developing World Perspective on the Kenneth C. Land and Alex C. Michalos Report on ‘Fifty Years After the Social Indicators Movement’

Africa is a latecomer to the Social Indicators Movement. The first social indicators for Third World countries were developed by outsiders and covered almost exclusively topics related to basic needs and development. In response to Kenneth Land’s and Alex Michalos’ historical assessment and their agenda for future ‘social indicators/quality of life/well-being’ research, the commentary traces how South Africa and sub-Saharan countries—with a little help from many friends who are pioneers in the movement—have succeeded in developing their own home-grown social indicators movement. Addressing some of the themes outlined in the agenda that Land and Michalos set for future research, the commentary discusses the importance of monitoring social change occurring in African society in a ‘post-industrialized and much more globalized, and digitized-computerized-roboticized’ era: How will new values and norms impact on the quality of life of future generations of African people?     

The Impact of Social Expenditure on Attitudes Towards Immigration in Europe

There is a growing body of literature dealing with the causes behind anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia. Based on the literature on the fiscal burden model, this paper contends that the differences in attitudes toward immigration, between low and high statuses, can be explained by the size of the welfare state. We argue that the impact of socio-economic status on attitudes toward immigration is larger in countries where social expenditure is high. Since a potential increase in the number of welfare recipients due to new immigrants might lead to a reduction in per capita transfers, low-income individuals in these countries are expected to be more concerned about the effect of immigration on social benefits. Using multilevel models and data from the European Social Survey we have found that while the effect of socio-economic status on attitudes toward immigration is positive there is a great deal of variation between countries. The difference in attitudes between high and low socio-economic statuses increases as social expenditure increases. Moreover, increases of social expenditure in the short run increases anti-immigrant sentiment as it raises concerns about the impact of immigration on welfare services.     

Assessing Happiness Inequality in the Welfare State: Self-Reported Happiness and the Rawlsian Difference Principle

The effect of the size of the welfare state on the average happiness level in a nation has often been discussed—but the same effect on happiness inequality has been explored much less. Rooted in divergent philosophical disciplines, utilitarianism and egalitarianism respectively, scholars have discussed the merits of policies as they effect each of these two criteria for justice. John Rawls’ difference principle, on the other hand, philosophically justifies a limited trade-off, increasing happiness inequality to benefit the over-all happiness level of the least advantaged. The difference principle—that society should allow inequality insofar as it is to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged—has seldom been discussed empirically in the context of the happiness literature. This paper contributes to the ongoing literature evaluating the welfare state in light of happiness indicators by introducing the difference principle and asking whether the welfare state benefits the least advantaged in society. My empirical analysis shows that self-reported life satisfaction of the least advantaged does not improve from an increase in the size of the welfare state more than the self-reported life satisfaction of the average citizen. In short, the welfare state does not benefit the worst-off in a society in terms of happiness more than the average member.     

Conditional Solidarity: Social Class,Experiences of the Economic Crisis,and Welfare Attitudes in Europe

The aftermath of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis of 2007/2008 turned out as a veritable “stress test” for European welfare states. Aiming to stabilize citizens’ living conditions and mitigate socio-economic hardship, European governments have engaged in active crisis management. Yet, the protective capacities of European welfare states vary, as does individuals’ exposure to crisis-induced social risks. Hence, the crisis has impacted countries and the members of different social classes unequally. Against this backdrop, this paper asks how Europeans’ perceptions of the personal impact of the crisis are associated with their welfare attitudes, focusing on variations between social classes and across nations. Using cross-sectional Eurobarometer survey data from 2010 for 27 European countries, I find that perceived crisis impact is associated with greater support for welfare state responsibility and redistribution. However, this association is not homogeneous but moderated by an individual’s class position as well as national economic conditions and social spending levels. More specifically, on the individual level, perceived crisis impact is associated with more favourable welfare attitudes not only among its traditional supporters—such as the working class or the unemployed—but also among its traditional opponents, notably the self-employed. Furthermore, where social spending is higher, welfare state support is less strongly related to perceived crisis impact, suggesting that more encompassing welfare states mitigate the subjective impacts of the crisis. However, redistribution appears to be slightly more contested between those affected and those not affected by the crisis under better economic conditions. Given the challenges facing welfare states across Europe, it remains to be seen how stable a basis of popular support can be formed on these grounds.     

Happy life-expectancy

One of the aims of social indicator research is to develop a comprehensive measure of quality-of-life in nations that is analogous to GNP in economic indicator research. For that purpose, several multi dimensional indexes have been proposed. In addition to economic performance, these also acknowledge the nation's success in matters like schooling and social equality. The most current indicator of this type is the ‘Human Development Index’. In this approach QOL is measured by input; the degree to which society provides conditions deemed beneficial (‘presumed’ QOL). The basic problem is that one never knows to what extent the cherished provisions are really good for people. An alternative is measuring QOL in nations by output, and consider how well people actually flourish in the country. This ‘apparent’ QOL can be measured by the degree to which citizens live long and happily. This conception is operationalized by combining registration based estimates of length-of-life, with survey data on subjective appreciation-of-life. Life-expectancy in years is multiplied by average happiness on a 0–1 scale. The product is named ‘Happy Life-Expectancy’ (HLE), and can be interpreted as the number of years the average citizen in a country lives happily at a certain time. HLE was assessed in 48 nations in the early 1990's. It appears to be highest in North-West European nations (about 60) and lowest in Africa (below 35). HLE scores are systematically higher in nations that are most affluent, free, educated, and tolerant. Together, these country-characteristics explain 70% of the statistical variance in HLE. Yet HLE is not significantly related to unemployment, state welfare and income equality, nor to religiousness and trust in institutions. HLE does not differ either with military dominance and population pressure. The conclusion is that HLE qualifies as the envisioned comprehensive social indicator. It has both clear substantive meaning (happy life-years) and theoretical significance (ultimate output measure). HLE differentiates well. Its correlations fit most assumptions about required input, but also challenge some. The indicator is likely to have political appeal.     

Indicators of Social Isolation: A Comparison Based on Survey Data from Germany

The paper presents a data-based comparison of three indicators of social isolation that are frequently used in contemporary social research: (a) low frequency of social contact with friends, relatives, and neighbors (social contact indicator); (b) absence of a discussion network (discussion network indicator); (c) absence of social support (support indicator). All three indicators are in line with an understanding of social isolation as the absence of close personal relationships. However, as shown in this paper, they are correlated only weakly to each other and lead to different results concerning the overall share of social isolation, age disparities, and gender differences of social isolation. Against this background, the paper proceeds with considerations on the content validity and criterion validity of the three indicators. Different versions of each indicator are scrutinized to gain insights on content validity. Conclusions on criterion validity are drawn from an examination of the correlations between the indicators and health, poverty, satisfaction with family life, and satisfaction with social life. Findings suggest a higher validity of the social contact indicator compared to the other two indicators. Data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel. Discussions of content validity are additionally based on analyses using the German Family Survey and the German Aging Survey.     

Parenthood and Quality of Life in Old Age: The Role of Individual Resources,the Welfare State and the Economy

Although the notion of ‘Social Europe’ can refer to different principles and policy options, most research narrows down attitudes towards Social Europe to a unidimensional construct. In this study, we instead propose a multi-dimensional approach, and contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we elaborate the notion of ‘Social Europe’ conceptually, and distinguish between the decision-making level for social policy, European social citizenship, harmonization, member-state solidarity and interpersonal solidarity. Second, analysing the 2014 Belgian National Election Study by means of confirmatory factor analysis we evidence that citizens indeed have distinct attitudes towards the policy principles and instruments of Social Europe. Although these attitudinal dimensions are interrelated, they cannot be reduced to a single Social Europe factor, meaning that citizens differentiate in their attitudes between various aspects of Social Europe. In addition, our research indicates that member-state solidarity is the primary aspect of Social Europe in public opinion, whereas the feature that has received most scholarly attention in empirical research to date—the preferred decision-making level for social policy—cannot be considered as a key component of attitudes towards Social Europe. Third, we investigate whether citizens with different educational levels conceptualize Social Europe similarly using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Results indicate that the attitudinal factor structure of Social Europe is largely equivalent among lower and higher-educated citizens.     

Country-Level Investment in Cultural Opportunity Structures. A Potential Source of Health Differences Between 21 European Countries

Individual’s participation in cultural activities may positively affect health through a pathway mediated by social capital. We examine whether country-level investment in cultural opportunity structures was associated with between-country differences in self-rated health and, if so, whether these associations were mediated by citizens’ confidence in societal institutions, i.e., by institutional trust, regarded as a dimension of social capital. For 24,887 respondents in the European Social Survey, 2006, data on self-rated health, institutional trust (individual-level and country-level), and sociodemographic variables were linked with statistics-based country-level data on 10 indicators of cultural opportunity structures and mediator variables (gross domestic product (GDP), Gini index, and welfare state regime). Over and above the sociodemographics, six cultural indicators contributed to between-country health differences in logistic multilevel regression analysis: the percentage of arts students, the RC index, the percentage of writers and creative artists of total employment, exports of cultural goods, imports of cultural goods, and the number of feature films produced per capita. Controlling, furthermore, for trust, and country-level mediators, only imports of cultural goods contributed to between-country differences in health. No associations with other cultural indicators remained after controlling for GDP or welfare state regime. Institutional trust may partially mediate the significance of cultural investments for self-rated health. However, both cultural investment and trust may be concomitants of general prosperity and welfare policies. Future studies should investigate whether the countries’ welfare policies influence the transformation of cultural investment into institutional trust and which types of indicators best depict associations between investments and health.     

Building Universal Socio-cultural Indicators for Standardizing the Safeguarding of Citizens’ Rights in Smart Cities

This research explores the opportunity to use standards as recommender instruments for designing urban policy. Standards are soft regulatory mechanisms that can be used for monitoring and safeguarding. More precisely, we explore the potential use of social standards for centering the focus of the smart cities initiative back to the citizens, and establishing a citizen-centered approach. This is in contrast to the industrial drive and technological emphasis which currently dominates. Accordingly, we present a set of novel citizenship indicators which serve as the basis for the social standardization of smart cities, something which is not now taking place, in order to ensure and safeguard the basic social urban rights of citizens. The juridical basis and well-established points of reference for building indicators for citizens’ rights in the city are two International Charters. These are the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City, and the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City. In this paper, we start by comparing and analyzing the rights contained in each of the two Charters, and elaborating indicators for measuring the promotion and protection of these rights. The elaboration of indicators has been based on different criteria and under the common premise of universal existence of feeding data, which is the most recurrent problem when building indicators meant to be global. Next, at the request of the International Standards Organization (ISO), we select the most relevant socio-cultural indicators for the Global Charter Agenda, which will be introduced in the on-going revision of the smart cities and communities standard ISO 37120:2014 Sustainable development of communities—Indicators for city services and quality of life. This will make ISO 37120 a more beneficial social standard for monitoring and safeguarding citizens’ rights in the smart city.     

Work Disability Among Native-born and Foreign-born Americans: On Origins,Health, and Social Safety Nets

Public debates about both immigration policy and social safety net programs are increasingly contentious. However, little research has explored differences in health within America’s diverse population of foreign-born workers, and the effect of these workers on public benefit programs is not well understood. We investigate differences in work disability by nativity and origins and describe the mix of health problems associated with receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. Our analysis draws on two large national data sources—the American Community Survey and comprehensive administrative records from the Social Security Administration—to determine the prevalence and incidence of work disability between 2001 and 2010. In sharp contrast to prior research, we find that foreign-born adults are substantially less likely than native-born Americans to report work disability, to be insured for work disability benefits, and to apply for those benefits. Overall and across origins, the foreign-born also have a lower incidence of disability benefit award. Persons from Africa, Northern Europe, Canada, and parts of Asia have the lowest work disability benefit prevalence rates among the foreign-born; persons from Southern Europe, Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Caribbean have the highest rates.     

我国三类人群社会福利现状的定量研究

我国社会福利正经历着从"小福利"向"大福利"的转型,而认清区域间社会福利的差异对于整体转型具有重要意义。利用SPSS软件中的均值分析、回归分析和聚类分析技术,从福利供应的角度对我国儿童教育福利、残疾人康复福利、老年人供养福利进行区域差异的量化研究。研究发现,我国三类人群的社会福利基本上呈现出自东向西逐步恶化的趋势,经济发展水平对社会福利呈现出了决定性作用,且三类社会福利的区域差异程度有内部分化。在认清我国区域间社会福利差异的前提下,应强化对中西部地区的支持,保证福利供应在区域之间的平衡,为实现"大福利"的转型奠定基础。     

‘Valid’ empirical measurement of quality of life?

Results of empirical quality of life studies, undertaken hitherto, are subjectively influenced to a considerable extent by the researchers who try to measure the ‘quality of life’. In substantiation of this allegation it is shown on the basis of empirical data that the results are highly influenced, among others, (1) by the selection of indicators, (2) by the aggregation of indicators to one element, (3) by the weighting or non-weighting of the indicators, (4) by the indicator weigths given by different groups, (5) by employing different measurement techniques. Remarkable progress in empirical measurement could be made by the employment of objective indicators which are weighted by different groups (e.g., citizens, experts, decision makers, etc.). This approach can be called a ‘weighted objective indicator’ approach. In the second half of the article the proposal is made to measure infrastructure disparities both in physical and monetary terms. This permits a comprehensive assessment of the infrastructure's deficits and surplus on the level of indicators, subconcerns, and concerns.     

Theorizing indicators

Policymakers and social theorists have increasingly come to rely on social indicators to guide their decisions and theories. Social indicators are also useful in bridging theory and empirical research as well as the traditional gap between policymaking and social theory. The concept of social indicators covers interpretation of cultural signs, simple statistical measures, and complex statistical indexes related to sets of domains. The article views the development of child well-being indicators as central not only in the social welfare field, but as an indicator of future societal conditions, given that children’s lives are especially sensitive to social change. The paper addresses the development of indicators of children’s well-being, arguing that the expansion of the field, the complexity of new domains and indicators, and the position of children as “being” and “becoming”, they are citizens of the present as well as being socialized for the future, illustrates that the next crucial step for the field is to further elaborate theories and models.     

Quantitative Storytelling in the Making of a Composite Indicator

The reasons for and against composite indicators are briefly reviewed, as well as the available theories for their construction. After noting the strong normative dimension of these measures—which ultimately aim to ‘tell a story’, e.g. to promote the social discovery of a particular phenomenon, we inquire whether a less partisan use of a composite indicator can be proposed by allowing more latitude in the framing of its construction. We thus explore whether a composite indicator can be built to tell ‘more than one story’ and test this in practical contexts. These include measures used in convergence analysis in the field of cohesion policies and a recent case involving the World Bank’s Doing Business Index. Our experiments are built to imagine different constituencies and stakeholders who agree on the use of evidence and of statistical information while differing on the interpretation of what is relevant and vital.