Contenu du sommaire : Social Welfare Reforms in Europe

Since the early 1990s many European welfare states have introduced reforms to their systems of social protection, in response to significant demographic and labour market challenges. This paper provides an overview of these diverse policy responses in a range of Continental countries (France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Austria), as well as in a range of Southern European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece). The first part of the paper surveys the social and economic environment for welfare state reform, including recent and prospective labour market and demographic developments, trends in the level and distribution of social expenditures, as well as developments in income inequality and poverty. The paper then reviews policy responses from a broad perspective, looking at reforms to pensions, support for people with disabilities, family assistance, support for the unemployed, and minimum income protection programmes (social assistance). The paper concludes with a discussion of the similarities and differences across these countries in these challenges and in the social policy responses.

Countries that share a particular social protection system, of Bismarckian inspiration and based on social insurance, seem to encounter similar and particularly awkward difficulties. They also seem to be following parallel trends in reforms, with respect to both their timing and their content and process. This paper is an attempt to compare the development of Bismarckian welfare systems during the last 25 years, showing the common pattern of reform.

Does South European welfare have any specificity in dealing with the challenges and constraints shaping the evolution of social protection in the European Union? Is there any particular Mediterranean response to welfare developments in the EU different from the Corporatist, Liberal or Social-democratic regimes? Are the characteristics of the model of social protection in Southern Europe likely to endure in the near future or are they in a process of deep transformation? This article carries out an overview of societal transformations and welfare reform in South European countries related to three main areas of analysis: Socio-economic; Politico-institutional and Cultural-axiological. By discussing continuity and change concerning these analytical dimensions, the article aims at identifying thematic areas and key issues for future research which could test the resilience – or otherwise – of welfare arrangements in Southern Europe.

The focus of this article is on those policy areas – social assistance for the poor, family transfers and social care services – which in most comparative analyses are indicated as the weakest components of the Mediterranean safety net. Trends in these policy areas are analysed within the framework of the division of responsibility and labour between welfare state, family solidarity, and role of the third sector and of the market. Southern European welfare states have been described as at the same time “rudimentary” and highly “familialised”, with charities and third sector agencies more or less idiosyncratically “filling the holes” both of welfare state and of family solidarity. Until the nineties, all of them lacked a last resource safety net, but in the case of specific categories. During the nineties, these countries have partly restructured the composition and logic of their safety nets. On the one hand, the welfare mix has been more systematically regulated. On the other hand, anti-poverty policies entered the policy discourse and agenda, although only Portugal has succeeded in introducing a minimum income provision at the state level. The ensuing developments strengthened both commonalities and differences among these countries. Dependence on family solidarity and heavy reliance on third sector actors remain a common feature. But countries differ in the impact of territorial differentiation in “welfare mixes”, which, particularly in Spain and Italy, is increasingly rooted in the institutional set up of the state.

This study puts into historical perspective the balance defined by the European treaties between the economic and social dimensions of the European project. It highlights the two main characteristics of the building of social Europe. First, rather than constituting an objective for its own sake, social Europe has until recently developed as an accompanying measure of the economic integration between the Member States of the European Community, and now the European Union. Second, it has developed through a diversity of legal methods, including in the process a large array of actors. Social Europe today results, first, from certain provisions of the Rome Treaty, from legislative measures, and from the case-law of the European Court of Justice. But it also has developed from the adoption of political declarations which are not legally binding – such as the 1989 Community Charter of fundamental social rights of workers and the 2000 Charter of fundamental rights –, from European social dialogue, and from the “open” coordination between the Member States in the fields of employment and social inclusion. The study identifies the different historical stages in the building of social Europe, and it replaces those stages in a theoretical framework in order to shed light on the logic which connects them with one another.

The promotion of gender equality requires policymakers to define the goal: equality as ‘sameness' (to men), or more recognition of ‘difference', particularly in relation to motherhood and the unpaid work of care. The problem of progressing gender equality has become more pressing with rapid family and labour market change, and with the trend in welfare state restructuring since the 1990s, which has emphasised the importance of all adults being active in the labour market.This article explores first, the development of policy at the EU level, where there has always been an explicit commitment to gender equality, and shows that it has proved difficult to keep the goal of gender equality in the centre of the policy agenda. In addition, as section II shows, the policy approaches of member states vary hugely; their policy logics are profoundly different. The article concludes by suggesting that if gender equality is to be prioritised, and a genuine choice to be given to women and men in relation to both paid work and care work, a wide range of policies relating to carework in particular are needed, and that these must address men as well as women.

Ideologies on work, caregiving, family, and gender relations vary across countries and over time. Contemporary perspectives typically stress child well-being; women's caregiving burden; or gender equality; the tensions among these can be resolved in societies that combine intensive parental time for children with gender-egalitarian divisions of labor. Social and labor market policies that would support such a society are the most developed in the Social Democratic countries, with the Conservative countries of continental Europe and the Liberal English-speaking countries lagging substantially (most markedly, the United States). That policy variation appears to shape cross-country variation in crucial parent and child outcomes.

The paper examines the relationship between family formation (i.e., living with a partner and having children) and women's occupational career in southern Europe (i.e., Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). The relationship is explored by analysing the impact that different family structures and male involvement in caring activities have on women's early occupational trajectories (i.e., remaining in the same occupational status, experiencing downward or upward mobility, or withdrawing from paid work). This research shows that male involvement in caring activities does not really push women ahead in their career, but the absolute lack of male support seems to negatively affect women's permanence in paid work. These results apply to all southern European countries except Portugal, where the absolute absence of the partners' support in caring activities does not seem to alter women's determination to remain in paid work. The methodology applied consists of the estimation of multinomial logit regression models and the analysis is based on eight waves (1994-2001) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP).

I discuss the effects of the four pension reforms (1992, 1995, 1997, 2004) undertaken in Italy during the last fifteen years. The reforms of the ‘90s have successfully stabilized expenditure, both in the short and the long run, and raised the retirement age thresholds. However, they are characterized by a long transition period and will originate problems of adequacy, at the same time shifting most risks upon the individual. The 2004 reform again focuses on expenditure and retirement age, raising it by more than three years from 2008 and to this aim sacrificing some of the flexibility features of the “notional defined contribution” system introduced in 1995. Further interventions would be needed though to smooth its labor market effects, while adequacy is still likely to emerge – quite abruptly since around 2015 – as the Italian pension system most critical issue.

The recent retirement reforms in Portugal have not changed the redistributive nature of the social model since distribution was essentially maintained as the financial technique. The technique of capitalization was introduced in the margin; it concerns people whose wages are superior to a certain sum and who can leave the mandatory system to go to private schemes.This reform is built upon pension parameters. It is intended to essentially benefit public finances; indeed, the increase in the amount of wages necessary in order to determine the value of the pension and the index for re-evaluating the planned wages means that the social security accounts will improve in the medium and long term. However, from a social standpoint, people will suffer from a decreased standard of living because of the lower replacement rate of wages by pensions.