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The economic crisis has undoubtedly impacted welfare states through the austerity policies prioritised to purportedly lead economies back to a growth path. In this paper, we assess the effects of the crisis in those welfare states, focusing on income benefits and analysing cases of welfare state change before the crisis via gross replacement rates available through the OECD tax/benefits database. We begin with a literature review on impacts of the crisis on welfare states, then focus on our hypothesis that retrenchment trends were already in motion before the crisis. From our point of view, this is relevant to understanding the evolution of welfare states since 2001, particularly those effects attributable to the crisis (versus those that are not); this may also be of help in the prediction of future trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the market transition in Eastern Europe, social support mechanisms shifted from employment-based measures to means-tested ones. This restructuring, along with an overall decrease in social support and economic productivity and an increase in unemployment, meant that these payments were often inadequate to address the large rise in poverty during this period of time. Little research, however, considers whether individual-level payments were effective in reducing poverty. This paper considers the efficacy of these individual-level payments in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, using two-wave panel data. It shows that state transfers to individuals reduced their poverty in all these countries. Thus, while the level of payments may have been inadequate to eliminate the adverse effects of the market transition, the payments themselves were beneficial to individuals and reduced their poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic instability, social changes, and new social policies place economic insecurity high on the scholarly and political agenda. We contribute to these debates by proposing a new multidimensional, intertemporal measure of economic insecurity that accounts for both its multiplicity and its dynamism. First, we develop three theory-driven, multidimensional measures of economic insecurity. Principal Components Analysis validates the measure. Second, we develop a dynamic approach to insecurity, using longitudinal data and a newly revised headcount method. Third, we then use our new measures to analyze the distribution of insecurity in Europe. Our analysis shows that insecurity is widespread across Europe, even in low-inequality, encompassing welfare states. Moreover, it extends across income groups and occupational classes, reaching into the middle classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare-state regimes achieve different outcomes in dealing with social inequalities. For example, the social democratic or Scandinavian welfare-state regime is often considered as the most egalitarian with a high social transfer rate and a comparably low level of income inequality. While most research on welfare-state regimes focuses on objective indicators of quality of life and inequalities, we are interested in how citizens actually evaluate their lives, using subjective well-being (SWB) as an indicator. The paper deals with two research questions: (1) How does the welfare-state regime affect subjective well-being, and (2) does the welfare-state regime influence the effect of status on SWB? Status is an essential first-order goal to produce subjective well-being according to the social production theory of Lindenberg and colleagues (Ormel et al. 1999), but is also linked to many other instrumental goals such as comfort and stimulation. The study carries out a multilevel analysis using pooled European Social Survey data from the years 2002-2012, covering more than 30 European countries. While we first look at how status drives SWB levels in different welfare-state regimes as classified by Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999), our focus is mainly on cross-level interactions between welfare-state regime type and the relationship between status and SWB. Our results provide evidence that social-democratic welfare-state regimes not only provide for living standards that are associated with the highest SWB levels, but also compensate best for status differences in SWB compared to other welfare-state regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two recent articles (Grunow et al. in J Marriage Fam 80(1):42–60, 2018; Knight and Brinton in Am J Sociol 122(5):1485–1532) suggest that gender ideology is multidimensional. Such a finding is of utmost importance because, if robust, it can be used in future comparative (multilevel) research. However, these two articles present different results on which gender ideology profiles are dominant in Europe. Using the European Value Study, we replicate and extend these Latent Class analyses and address the question of generalizability and content- and criterion-related validity. We come to a five-cluster solution that not only synthesizes theoretically and empirically the results of the two articles, but also contributes to the literature by clarifying the place of these five gender ideology types in a multidimensional space. We suggest that in Europe five 'worlds of norms' exist that are mutually influenced by the general institutional context of welfare states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European population is aging and their declining capacity makes older Europeans more dependent on the availability of care. Male and female health needs at older ages are different, yet there are contradictory results on the study of gender inequalities in health among the older European population. The aim of this article is twofold: first, we study whether there is a general gender health gap at older ages across Europe. Secondly, we analyze the existence of an increasing or decreasing universal association between the gender health gap and age among the older European population or whether, by contrast, this depends on the type of welfare state. To achieve these goals, we use data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for respondents aged 50 and over in 2015, and we carry out several multilevel random intercept logistic regressions for European countries. Our results show that when we split European countries into groups according to the type of welfare state, we only find a significant gender health gap in older people in Southern and Social Democratic countries. Some differences have been found in the links between the gender health gap and age among European countries. Old women report worse health than men at all ages in Southern countries while in Social Democratic states it is only true for women aged 80 and over. In Bismarckian states there are barely any gender differences, while the gender health gap has no clearly defined bias. Between the ages of 60 and 79, men from Eastern European countries report poorer health, while after 80 it is women who report poorer health. In general, we found the widest gender inequalities in health for the oldest population group, especially in Southern and Eastern European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, researchers investigate the impact of diversity on society. To measure diversity, either archival data at the national level of census data at the neighborhood level, within a single country are used. Both approaches are limited. The first approach does not allow to investigate variation in diversity within countries and the second approach misses the possibility to investigate cross national differences. The present study aims at bringing these two approaches closer together by constructing diversity measures based on the European Social Survey (ESS). The ESS is collected every 2 years since 2002 and includes individual level data that allow replicating earlier measures of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity for 30 European countries. Furthermore, since respondents are asked to indicate in what region they live, measured with the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics classification, it is possible to construct disaggregated measures. Comparing the new indicators with existing diversity scores leads to the following conclusions. First, the new and old measures are strongly correlated at the national level. Secondly, investigating the relationship between diversity and different kinds of sociality (interpersonal trust, institutional trust, and support for government redistribution) shows that regional diversity is more strongly related to them than diversity at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does immigration reduce natives’ support for the welfare state? Evidence from the European Social Survey (2002/2003) suggests a more qualified relation. For Europe as a whole, there is only weak evidence of a negative association between the perceived presence of immigrants and natives’ support for the welfare state. However, this weak average relationship masks considerable heterogeneity across countries. We distinguish two channels through which immigration could affect natives’ support for the welfare state: a pure dislike of immigrants and concerns about the economic consequences of immigration. We find that natives who hold both negative views react much more negatively to a given perceived share of immigrants than natives who hold neither view. However, there is no clear pattern concerning the relative importance of the two channels. Finally, we find that natives who hold either of these negative views of immigrants tend to be less supportive of the welfare state independently of the perceived presence of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the intersection of comparative welfare state research and comparative attitude research in western Europe. Patterns of social attitudes; Impact of institutions; Attitudes towards government intervention; Magnitude of class differences.