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Byline: Kyo-seong Kim (1), Yongwoo Lee (2), Yu-jeong Lee (3) Keywords: Poverty; Income-maintenance policy; Public social expenditure; Hierarchical linear model (HLM); Hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM) Abstract: This study aims to investigate factors contributing to poverty, one of the most significant social problems in Western societies. To this end, 13 countries that have made a variety of efforts to reduce poverty, and therefore experienced similar development processes related to welfare, were selected. To overcome the methodological limitations of previous studies, the study utilized a Hierarchical Generalized Linear Model to simultaneously analyze individual-level and state-level factors that might affect the poverty status of a household, employing household data from the fifth wave of Luxembourg Income Study and Comparative Welfare State data. By comparing the magnitude of individual- and state-level effects in the analysis process, the model can empirically illuminate which of the two levels is more responsible for households' destitution. Furthermore, by analyzing the level of and characteristics of poverty in each country, this study examines whether there are discrepancies in the level of poverty across types of welfare states and what factors contribute to these discrepancies. Author Affiliation: (1) Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea (2) Konkuk University, Chungju, Korea (3) Seoul Welfare Foundation, Seoul, Korea Article History: Registration Date: 01/03/2010 Accepted Date: 01/03/2010 Online Date: 13/03/2010

In a previous paper in this journal (Headey et al., 2000) a comparison was made between three so-called 'best cases' of welfare regime types, the 'Liberal' US, 'the 'Corporatist' Germany and the 'Social-Democratic' Netherlands. The main conclusion was that the Social-Democratic welfare state performed best on nearly all social and economic indicators that were applied. That paper was based on the ten-year datasets drawn from the national socio-economic panel studies. For this paper we use the unique comparative panel dataset of the European Community Household Panel. At the time of research, only three waves of data covering the 1994-96 period were available. Instead of three countries representing three different welfare state types as in the earlier paper we cover twelve countries allowing us to distinguish a fourth Southern or Mediterranean welfare regime type and to compare the performance of the four regimes. Compared to the Headey's et al. paper we focus on the comparative analysis of the level of deprivation and pay less attention to income poverty and inequality. Because we consider deprivation to be part of the concept of social exclusion (see also Atkinson et al., 2002) our results also provide evidence on how welfare regimes across the EU cope with social exclusion. We conclude that the Social-Democratic welfare state does a good job of preventing income poverty but performs less well in equalising levels of deprivation. Our results also show that the immature Southern welfare states perform worse with respect to preventing deprivation. Trying to explain levels of deprivation by estimating Tobit panel regressions it turned out that the impact of regime type remains significant though limited. Common, 'structural' disparities between the countries and regimes in terms of economic welfare, the demographic structure, and the employment situation explain most of the variance across countries.

There is a growing political and fiscal urgency in Sweden for renewing the public sector and enriching the welfare state. Neither of the protagonists in the current debate about public or private social services takes third sector alternatives nor the potential contribution they could make into account. Three such contributions are empowerment of consumers, renewal and enrichment of working life, and enhancement of goal fulfillment in the public sector through third sector cooperative alternatives. All three of these contributions are also objectives for renewing the public sector and enriching the welfare state. Reasons for failing to consider the contribution of third sector alternatives to these objectives may be partly ideological and partly due to ignorance. But whatever the reason, there are numerous theoretical and practical implications for promoting third sector alternatives for achieving both public and private goals. This article argues that each of the three types of third sector alternatives discussed herein makes a direct contribution to one or more of these objectives, while it also contributes indirectly to the other two. There are also certain disadvantages or trade-offs associated with each alternative and objective, which are discussed herein.