Final Report Summary - WSF (Welfare State Futures)
Executive Summary:
Since 2004 the NORFACE Network has proven itself as a successful coordinated common action of currently nineteen national research funding agencies. NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe) has offered unique opportunities for participating funding agencies by developing common research funding instruments, thus creating opportunities for facilitating and building new networks of research collaboration in the social sciences. By strengthening and promoting co-operation amongst member organisations, NORFACE is contributing to the realisation of the European Research Area in the Social Sciences.
The development of welfare systems was one of the defining characteristics of the 20th century, especially in Europe. However, in times of change, it is important to re-think 'the welfare state'. The title of the NORFACE ERA-NET Plus programme “Welfare State Futures” emphasizes that the future is not pre-determined. Countries have choices about how to respond to economic and social challenges, and their choices will shape the future of their welfare states. Research on the welfare state is a well-developed field in social science, based on various theoretical approaches and a long tradition of comparative studies. However, the aim of this programme call is to encourage innovative thinking: to stimulate novel research questions, to orient research towards the future, and to bring disciplines together in collective and comparative projects. In these ways, it hopes to foster theoretical, conceptual and methodological innovation.
The programme is funded by fifteen NORFACE partners, the Swedish council Forte and the European Commission. With eighteen million euro from the research programme “Welfare State Futures”, NORFACE has funded fifteen transnational research projects that have started in 2015. The fifteen teams with 59 principal investigators have been researching topics ranging from health inequalities, globalisation, families, migration and social security rights, to citizens’ support for the welfare state. In these projects, researchers from a wide variety of disciplines have been working together across Europe, from Slovenia to Norway and Estonia to Portugal, and have been looking beyond Europe too. Professor Ellen M. Immergut has been appointed as Scientific Programme Coordinator.
The fifteen transnational projects have been approaching this relevant theme from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. The aim of the transnational and interdisciplinary projects has been to analyse the societal, economic, political and legal contexts in which the welfare state will develop in the future and to understand better the logic of its evolution. By doing so they enable and encourage multi-disciplinary research and offer a fruitful European approach, with opportunities for comparison. The Welfare State Futures research programme advances globally excellent research which holds the promise of theoretical, methodological and empirical advance.
The programme also has been seeking to promote research-based knowledge and insight which has societal, practical and policy relevance. This programme includes work in a variety of social science disciplines, including demography, economics, education, human geography, law, political science, political theory, psychology, social policy and sociology. The programme has an open approach to research, encourages inter-disciplinary and comparative analysis, with micro-macro-level analyses and inter-linkages between thematic fields. While the focus is on the European experience, the programme also has been looking outside of Europe to understand better European future developments.
The programme is unique and constitutes a step change in scale and scope for social sciences research programming on Welfare State Futures. Furthermore, by discussing national and international strategic initiatives, developing mechanisms to exploit data and by co-ordinating a joint approach, NORFACE contributes to the developments of a European data infrastructure for the Social Sciences.
Project Context and Objectives:
The NORFACE Welfare State Futures Programme was designed to ask, and answer, fundamental questions about the design, delivery and experience of welfare in the 21st century from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. The programme features a Europe-wide network of researchers gathered around fifteen large projects comprising 60 principal investigators and nearly 200 affiliated researchers. The fields of inquiry can be captured by five main research clusters: Health; Migration; Welfare State Attitudes; Child and Family Welfare; and Globalization, Welfare States and Inequalities. Communication, network-building and synergy effects cutting across the projects has been fostered by a series of eight Thematic Workshops on the themes of Migration, Diversity and Welfare; the Future of Child and Family Welfare Policy; Inequality and Welfare States; Welfare and Migration; Welfare State Attitudes: the Social Legitimacy of Our Future Welfare State; Health Politics, Health Policy, Long-Term Care and Inequalities; Welfare State Reforms and Welfare State Attitudes; Dynamic Panel models; as well as a Final Conference and joint publications.
As a whole, the project results demonstrate that European Welfare States are resilient, and that social solidarity is alive and well in Europe. Indeed, using innovative methods, many of our projects have demonstrated that the vast majority of Europeans are welcoming to newcomers and are willing to lend a helping hand, but are also worried about the future. Public support for solidarity within and between European countries has become frayed after years of austerity, and the series of crises that have hit Europe. As part of a general suspicion of globalization, the European Union has been blamed for austerity, and the welfare state viewed as its victim—political framing put to excellent use by the radical right. Our research has documented the seriousness of these social and political problems. But it has also been able to pinpoint some key empirical evidence that is very relevant for addressing these issues. We provide hard evidence that immigrants to Europe do not come for the benefits, do not access benefits at higher rates than natives, and indeed pay in more in taxes than they take out in benefits. Nevertheless, the burden on European welfare states in coping with free-movement of citizens should not be simply ignored. Lack of clear jurisprudence about portability of social benefits has left much uncertainty on the ground, and owing to differences in welfare state design, some national programs are being overwhelmed by foreign claimants.
Our studies of work activation, health inequalities, and long-term care have important consequences for the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, and these have been incorporated into a European Elections Policy Paper that is presented in Brussels in March 2019. WSF research findings have already been published in over 200 refereed journal articles and university press books, many of which are available in open access and electronic formats, as well as additional policy briefs and working papers. The programme has fostered a pan-European network of both senior and younger researchers who are continuing their work on Welfare State Futures and providing a platform for further work in this areas. Thus, the programme has met its goals of scientific achievement; policy-relevant research dissemination; and capacity-building.
Professor Ellen M. Immergut, European University Institute, Italy
Scientific Programme Coordinator of the NORFACE Welfare State Futures programme
EXCEL: Exploring Comparative Effectiveness and efficiency in Long-term care
Prof. J.E. Forder, University of Kent at Canterbury; Dr. I.E.O. Linnosmaa, National Institute for Health and Welfare; J.N. Malley, London School of Economics; Dr. B. Trukeschitz, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business
This project proposed a cross-country study to measure outcomes in the field of long-term care (LTC). The project used a care-related outcome tool, ASCOT, to assess the comparative effectiveness and efficiency of non-institutional LTC (e.g. home care) for older adults and their informal carers in Austria, England and Finland. The study had four analytical work packages with these goals: Establish a valid basis for international comparisons of LTC-outcomes in non-institutional settings, by developing rigorously translated and tested versions of ASCOT; generate country-specific ASCOT utility weights and explore variations in preferences for ASCOT quality of life domains across countries; explore variations in ASCOT-quality of life (QoL) within and between countries, providing evidence on QoL for service users, carers and the relationship between them, as well as QoL inequalities; explore and compare the relative costs, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of specific LTC services.The team used econometric methods, combining estimates of the effect of services on QoL and service cost.
FACSK: Family complexity and social work. A comparative study of family-based welfare work in different welfare regimes
Prof. S.O.L. Nygren, Umea University; Prof. S. Oltedal, University of Stavanger; Prof. S.J.B. White, University of Sheffield
The purpose of this project was to analyse how social workers across different contexts understand notions of family and how they describe their own practices and outcomes with families. The study used empirical data from eight countries (Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, Chile, Mexico, Lithuania and Bulgaria) representing four different family policy regimes (de-familialised, partly de-familialised, familialised and re-familialised). Existing data relevant to family policies from Eurostat, the OECD and other databases was used. Additional national statistics and documents detailing the organisational structure of services was collected. Thirty two focus groups (eight countries; four service areas) were held using semi-structured interviews and case vignettes, engaging researchers from the three university partners of Sweden, Norway and UK, with co-operation partners in the other five countries.
FPRWS: Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state
Prof. A.W. Cappelen, NHH Norwegian School of Economics; Prof. S. Kuhnle, University of Bergen; Dr. S. Suetens, Tilburg University; Prof. J.R. Tyran, University of Vienna
The aim of this project was to analyse how fairness considerations, in particular with respect to personal responsibility, affect the support and effectiveness of welfare policies. This project provided new knowledge about how the welfare states can meet current challenges and how concerns for personal responsibility can be integrated in the design of welfare schemes in a way that is perceived as fair. Part A of the research project studied how people attribute personal responsibility for outcomes and the link between views about personal responsibility and the support for redistributive welfare policies. Part B of the research project studied people's preferences in situations where it is impossible to implement the welfare policies that are seen as most fair. In Part C of the research project the consortium studied what they referred to as reference-dependent social preferences and examined whether such preferences might shed light on cross-country differences in the support for welfare schemes. Four research teams from three countries; Austria, Norway and the Netherlands, took a cross-disciplinary perspective on fairness and used an innovative combination of methods, including lab and field experiments, survey studies and collection of administrative data.
GIWeS Globalisation, Institutions and the Welfare State
Prof. K.O. Moene, University of Oslo; Prof. C. Dustmann, University College London; Prof. O. Raaum, Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research; Prof. R. Winter-Ebmer, Johannes Kepler University Linz
Focussing on the global changes since 1989, the objective of GIWeS was to produce first class research on how trade, technology and the welfare state interact; on the challenges to national welfare states in an integrated European labour market, and on the political support for reform. The project was unique in several dimensions: it was comparative, focussing on countries that differ in their industry base, skill structure, and welfare institutions; it was relevant, addressing the financial crisis, migration and the support for welfare spending; it was dynamic, drawing on unique longitudinal information that allowed the team to explore long term impacts of global shocks down to the individual firm and the individual worker; it was innovative, linking for the first time administrative longitudinal data covering entire populations across countries allowing us to follow individuals across national borders, investigating their choices in work environments and welfare institutions; it was wide-ranging, capturing how globalization makes competition more dynamic, speeding up innovation, and the process of creative destruction, and how wide-ranging changes may give rise to a new political and economic equilibrium.
GlobLabWS: Globalisation, Labour Markets, and the Welfare State
Prof. C. Montagna, University of Aberdeen; Dr. H. Görg, Kiel Institute for World Economics; Prof. F. Sjöholm, Lund University
This pan-European collaborative project aimed to study the interaction between the welfare state (WS), globalization, and labour markets in determining a country’s aggregate performance. The consortium first studied how the WS shapes the effects of globalisation on individual labour market outcomes, with a focus on the role of competitive selection between firms and labour market matching processes. This provided the foundations for the second part of the project that examined the implications of a country’s WS policies on its aggregate employment and productivity. Methodologically, the project consisted of both theoretical and empirical work. Theoretical models helped identifying the channels through which WS policies affect microeconomic adjustments to globalisation and, through these, macroeconomic performance. Empirical comparative analyses both assessed the theory’s testable hypotheses and identified important stylised facts from inter-country comparative analysis.
HEALTHDOX: The Paradox of Health State Futures
Prof. E.M. Immergut, European University Institute; Dr. M. Ainsaar, Tartu University; Dr. K.M. Anderson, Radboud University; Prof. M. Asensio, Technical University of Lisbon; Dr. P. Blomqvist, Uppsala University; Dr. C. Devitt, Trinity College Dublin; Dr. M. Oskarson, University of Gothenburg
HEALTHDOX aimed to explore future trajectories of European health politics and policies through an investigation of the impact of recent health reforms on health inequalities, health expenditures, and public attitudes towards both the health system and the welfare state. This project investigated health policy developments from 1990 to the present in, among others, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. The impact of these policy changes were analysed using quantitative data found in both national and international sources. The comparative and transnational design of the project allowed the consortium to provide insights into health inequalities, the meaning of the welfare state for individuals, and the future politics of the welfare state, as well as to provide health policy-makers with important feedback on their policies.
HiNEWS: Health inequalities in European welfare states
Prof. dr. C. Bambra, University of Newcastle; Dr. T.A. Eikemo, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Dr. T.H.M. Huijts, University of York; Prof. dr. C. Wendt, University of Siegen
This project focused on the following question: why do social inequalities in health persist in European welfare states and what can be done to reduce them? The project consisted of six interrelated work packages delivered across three project phases. In the first phase, the consortium provided theoretical elaboration on the pathways whereby welfare states and healthcare systems influence the aetiology and reduction of social inequalities in health. In the second phase, the team explored and tested these pathways using morbidity and mortality indicators. The consortium also evidenced review methods to examine the effects of macro policy interventions in reducing health inequalities. In the third phase, they combined the work packages to produce country specific policy toolkits. The team used a variety of cutting edge data sources at the micro and macro level and employed state-of-the-art statistical techniques, such as counterfactual policy analyses and multilevel models.
4Is: Inequalities, Insurance, Incentives and Immigration: Challenges and Solutions for the Welfare State
Prof. E. Mörk, Uppsala University; Prof. M. Brewer, University of Essex; Prof. K. Kotakorpi, University of Turku; Prof. J. Pirttilä, University of Tampere
This research project examined how recent challenges, such as increased economic uncertainty and ethnic diversity, have affected inequality and support for the welfare state in European countries. It also investigated the work incentives embedded in the existing tax- and benefit systems and how these affect individuals’ behaviour, both in the short and in the long run. The project was divided into three strands. The team first measured inequality developments using multidimensional and lifetime perspectives, and assessed how different EU tax and benefit systems reduce economic vulnerability. Second, the consortium investigated support for redistribution, asking how ethnic diversity affects people’s support for the welfare state and, using methods from experimental psychology, examining the determinants of redistributive attitudes for different groups. Third, the team investigated the work incentives embedded in the existing tax and benefit systems and how these affect individuals’ behaviour, both in the short and in the long run, taking into account issues like the complexity of the tax design.
MIFARE: Migrants’ Welfare State Attitudes
Dr. M. Lubbers, Radboud University; Prof. dr. C. Diehl, University of Konstanz; Prof. C.A. Larsen, Aalborg University
This project was among the first to focus on migrants’ attitudes towards the welfare state. The consortium aimed to study migrants’ welfare state attitudes, and to explain differences across migrant groups, as well as differences compared to the overall public opinion in the country of origin and the host country. The team relied on existing cross-national datasets such as the ISSP. However, the consortium also proposed a harmonized and unique data collection among migrants in the destination countries Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. The consortium composed a team with expertise on data collection among migrants, on public opinion research, and expertise on welfare state attitudes in particular.
MobileWelfare: European Welfare Systems in Times of Mobility
Prof. dr. H.A.G. de Valk, Nederlands Interdisciplinair Demografisch Instituut; Prof. dr. M.L. Fonseca, University of Lisbon; Dr. H.G. de Haas, University of Oxford; Dr. P. Kaczmarczyk, University of Warsaw
This project aimed to understand the role of welfare systems in destination and origin countries for migration patterns within and towards Europe. The project moved beyond prior studies on the contested existence of welfare magnets and the presumed threat of (low-skilled) migration to the viability of welfare state benefits, and addressed three research questions: How and to what extent do welfare systems affect mobility patterns in Europe? To what extent and how do perceptions of access to welfare arrangements in origin and destination countries shape migration decisions? What role does transferability of welfare accounts play in mobility across Europe? The project combined macro and micro perspectives, and applied a mixed-methods approach of innovative analysis of existing statistics and migration data added with new primary data collection via case studies in seven countries. It went beyond reductionist categorisations of receiving and sending countries by considering all case study countries simultaneously as origins and destinations.
PORECAN: Policies and responses with regard to child abuse and neglect in England, Germany and the Netherlands: a comparative multi-site study
Prof. H.W.E. Grietens, University of Groningen; Prof. N. Biehal, University of York; Prof. S. Walper, German Youth Institute
The PORECAN project aimed to discover the nature and impact of variations in child protection systems through a comparison of three quite different welfare states (England, Germany, the Netherlands). It included a comparative analysis of child protection policy and empirical studies of child protection practice. Findings from the policy analysis underpinned the empirical phase, which compared (i) state responses to child maltreatment notifications and (ii) parent perspectives on professional intervention in different welfare states. The team compared: the ways child protection measures are negotiated, legitimized and perceived (by professionals and parents); their impact on children (e.g. protection/re-abuse; removal from home); the relationship between national policy, thresholds for intervention and social justice; rhetoric in child protection policy and practice, locating this within the wider child welfare policy framework in each country. The study also compared wider assumptions about the role of the state in family life, (including those regarding the rights of parents) and the ways different welfare states seek to balance children’s rights to protection (under the UNCRC) and parents’ rights to family life (under the Human Rights Act).
TransJudFare: Transnationalization and the judicialization of welfare
Prof. dr. S.K. Schmidt, University of Bremen; Dr. M. Blauberger, University of Salzburg; Prof. dr. G.T. Davies, VU University; Prof. D.S. Martinsen, University of Copenhagen
TransJudFare dealt with two challenges for welfare states in the European Union: the transnationalization of citizenship and welfare rights and the judicialization of politics. TransJudFare focused on social assistance measures and study grants and asked how member states respond to European case law at the level of lower courts, the administration, and the legislature. Teams of political scientists and lawyers in four member states mapped changes in five western EU member states according to a unified approach, joining forces in the analyses along different dimensions. Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK were chosen as they are all targeted by migration flows but differ in important respects such as welfare state type and judicial system. The project was institutional, asking whether the European welfare state survives the transformation, and what will happen to its different incarnations such as the Scandinavian, the German and the British model. It was spot on all five themes of the programme, organized around international research groups in London, Linz and Oslo, with additional partners.
TRANSWEL: Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe: An Analysis of Portability Regimes of Social Security Rights
Prof. dr. A.A. Amelina, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main; Prof. dr. E.C. Carmel, University of Bath
Prof. dr. A.R. Runfors, Södertörn University; Prof. dr. E.S. Scheibelhofer, University of Vienna
This project focused on the portability of social security rights in the enlarged European Union; that is, the rights to health insurance and to unemployment, retirement and family-related benefits. The project involved a comparative analysis, which traced the migrations of regularly and irregularly employed migrants and their family members and the portability of their social security rights between four pairs of countries: Hungary-Austria, Bulgaria-Germany, Poland-United Kingdom and Estonia-Sweden. First, the project examined legal regulations on the portability of social security rights. Second, it analysed a variety of mobile EU citizens' practices of portability, including limitations to portability they may involve. Third, the project reconstructed discourses of belonging incorporated into portability regulations to determine how they shape individuals' access to social security. Fourth, it provided insights into individuals' inequality experiences resulting from limitations to portability. Building on a transnational comparison of the four pairs of countries, the project then reconstructed variations in the portability of social security rights.
UPWEB: Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage
Prof. dr. J.A. Phillimore, University of Birmingham; Dr. H. Bradby, Uppsala University; Prof. M. Knecht, University of Bremen; Prof. B. Padilla, University of Minho
This project reconceptualised welfare theory through responding to the question of how all residents living in superdiverse neighbourhoods access healthcare. Using innovative techniques including street-mapping, community research and a mobile phone app alongside a neighbourhood survey, the consortium explored the multiple approaches that residents living in superdiverse neighbourhoods use to meet their health needs, encompassing the perspectives of service users and providers. The team generated new theoretical and practical insights through the development of models of welfare bricolage: the practice by which individuals combine formal, informal and virtual health services across public, private and third sectors in an attempt to meet need. The team used a comparative/sequential approach to interrogate local welfare states across eight deprived and upwardly mobile superdiverse neighbourhoods in four different national welfare states (UK, Portugal, Germany and Sweden) each with different welfare, health and migration regimes.
WelfSOC: Welfare State Futures: Our Children’s Europe
Prof. P.F. Taylor-Gooby, University of Kent at Canterbury; Prof. J. Goul Andersen, Aalborg University; Prof. M.F. Hrast, University of Ljubljana; Prof. B. Hvinden, NOVA - Norwegian Social Research; Prof. S. Mau, University of Bremen
How European welfare states will develop is hard to predict. This project used innovative methods (deliberative democratic forums, a qualitative cross-national focus group survey) to develop understanding of people’s aspirations for the Europe their children will inhabit. The interactive and discursive methods proposed dealt directly with people’s ideas, but have rarely been used in comparative welfare studies. The project was essentially forward-looking. It contributed to theoretical work on the main cleavages and solidarities driving social policy in different European welfare states and to more practical consideration of the parameters of acceptable policy change. It supplied new findings relevant to the politics and sociology of welfare and provide data for reanalysis and as a base-line in future studies. The team had led major cross-national projects and pressed home findings in national and EU-level policy debate.
Project Results:
EXCEL: Exploring Comparative Effectiveness and efficiency in Long-term care
Long-term care (LTC) is an increasingly major component of the welfare state, yet little is known about its impact. The project’s overarching contribution has been to provide policy-makers, professionals, and academics with the tools and methods to systematically measure LTC outcomes. First, the consortium developed and validated outcomes tools for Austria and Finland, based on the English Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT). The project also established the relative value of (preferences for) the effects of LTC in improving key aspects of LTC-related quality of life measured by ASCOT, for carers and cared-for people. The team measured – for the first time – preferences for Austrian and Finnish service user’s LTC-QoL and English carer’s LTC-QoL, and compared different data collection methods. Second, the consortium collected unique datasets in Austria and Finland on outcomes of people using LTC: 493 and 633 service users and 254 and 350 carers in Finland and Austria respectively. This is an invaluable resource in understanding the (comparative) effectiveness of care, already used to validate the new ASCOT measures. The team continue to analyse differences in LTC-QoL impact across the three countries. Third, the project provided lessons about overcoming the practical and methodological challenges of evaluating outcomes in frail populations.
FACSK: Family complexity and social work. A comparative study of family-based welfare work in different welfare regimes
The FACSK project provides a comparative analysis of social work with families with complex needs.
Different countries vary due to: family policies; laws and values; service structures and the access to organisational resources; social worker's professional values; and, the problem pressure in terms of seriousness and complexity of the difficulties families face related to children at risk, addictions, mental health and migration. Empirical findings of the FACSK study show that the family plays a crucial role in social work that addresses complex needs. Social work is conditioned by the welfare regime in which it is carried out, and traits of de-familisation vs. familialism are filtered down to the street-level work of social workers. However, social workers in different welfare systems exert discretion in a way that partly reduces the impact of this, especially in the field of child welfare, where the significance of the family is emphasised in all countries of the study. Theoretically, the project adds to welfare regime theory by its focus on context and practice in personal social services, and contributes to complexity theory in social work. The project addresses the improvement of competences for students and people working with interventions for vulnerable children and marginalised families.
FPRWS: Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state
The project has conducted the first experimental study to understand how people make decisions
about income distribution in situations where decision makers lack information about the source of inequality and in situations where the consequences of different choice alternatives are uncertain. The team has conducted novel experiments studying what people view as a morally relevant choice. The project is the first to study, using experimental methods, the extent to which people prefer a Bismarckian or a Beveridgean welfare state. The project also has conducted an innovative field experiment on tax compliance in collaboration with the Norwegian Tax Administration, where the team document that moral appeals can have a large effect on tax compliance. The consortium also conducted the first cross-national comparisons of social preferences in which nationally representative samples make real distributive choices, where we document large differences in the prevalence of fairness views in different societies. The researchers conduct the first study to elicit incentivized beliefs about the efficiency costs of taxation, with a large heterogeneous sample from the general population. The project included large-scale experiments that allow us to identify taste-based discrimination against immigrants in a representative sample.
GIWeS Globalisation, Institutions and the Welfare State
Expanding international trade, skill-biased technological developments and the mobility of labor and capital are important elements of recent global change. Investigating how European countries are exposed to these external farces over the last two decades requires a combination of detailed empirica! knowledge and institutional characterizations of firm behaviour, organizations, and welfare state arrangements. The most innovative and original contributions of the project relate to how the various subprojects combine register data, survey data, and information on institutional features to estimate causal impacts of globalization and new technologies. The originality is evident in the research on immigration and welfare arrangements, in the research on globalization and technology & organizational change, in the research on unionization and in the research on the support for different welfare state programs. One particularly important highlight is the research on how being on welfare is transmitted within families one generation after another. The team denotes it the intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency. This research is original and particularly innovative both in the problems raised and the methods and data used.
GlobLabWS: Globalisation, Labour Markets, and the Welfare State
The project highlights the effects of globalisation on the skill-structure of employment. Exporting and/or FDI activities are found to increase firm-level shares of high skilled occupations. The project also bridged the microeconomic/macroeconomic divide characterising the Welfare State (WS) literature by embedding behavioural micro-foundations within general equilibrium frameworks, capturing interactions/feedback effects between a rich menu of WS policies and globalisation in affecting labour markets. Furthermore, the project highlights the importance of labour market participation in shaping the micro/macro/WS interactions of the design of the ‘policy mix’ in determining the effects of WS reforms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, labour market flexibility is not key. Complementarities between Active and Passive Labour Market Policies can trigger virtuous circles of high participation, employment and productivity. The project also shows the role of intra-industry reallocations in determining the effect of international shocks on employment and the effectiveness of WS policies in offsetting them. Inter-country differences in intra-industry heterogeneity affect aggregate employment-to-output elasticities and policy effectiveness. Another highlight is the importance of exploiting policy interactions between policy areas. Industrial policies stimulating industry entry can strengthen the effectiveness of WS policies. Lastly, the project shows the effects of WS policies on the location decision of industries. Higher WS spending is negatively related to the likelihood of firms’ relocating from and positively related to foreign firms locating in a country.
HEALTHDOX: The Paradox of Health State Futures
HEALTHDOX has contributed to the cutting edge of research on welfare state attitudes by bringing causal identification with respect to values into this field. To this end, the team has used natural experiments with coarsened exact matching and panel data to demonstrate the impact of both health policy changes and individual switching between policy regimes on individual evaluative and normative attitudes. The consortium has cooperated with members of other NORFACE WSF projects to use multi-methods triangulation to explore the interpretative meanings that underpin respondents’ answers to survey questions on welfare states (WelfSOC), to explore the relationship between health care institutions and individual justice evaluations (HiNews), and to investigate the welfare state attitudes of migrants (Mifare). The team also contributed to the field of political determinants of welfare state policies and policy responsiveness. Using the expanded political indicators data set, the project shows that competition from radical right parties impedes social investment, and that electoral competition enhances social policy responsiveness, while veto points and corporatism inhibit social policy responsiveness. With regard to the impact of welfare state provision on attitudes, the project finds a U-shaped relationship, such that improved government financing is more highly supported by very insecure and very secure individuals than by those in the middle.
HiNEWS: Health inequalities in European welfare states
A special module examining the social determinants of health inequalities in Europe was included in the European Social Survey (2014). This was designed and analysed by HiNEWS team members, resulting in a special supplement of the European Journal of Public Health. The consortium found considerable cross-national variability in the magnitude and patterning of health inequalities and the effects of health conditions, and also access to health care which was found to vary by socio-economic position. In addition, a new health systems typology was developed and used to analyse the role of health care system types in reducing inequalities in mortality amenable to health care. This concluded that educational differences in amenable mortality for European countries exist in all countries, regardless of their health care system type. However, the study also found important variations in inequalities in amenable mortality between countries, indicating a potential role for healthcare system factors. The HiNEWS team also has developed new institutional approaches to the study of health inequalities in Europe which unpack the role of the welfare state as an institutional arrangement that mediates the effects of socio-economic status and gender on health. Finally, the consortium examined the role of the welfare state in reducing health inequalities through conducting a large evidence review of the role of public health policies. This examined the effects of primary and secondary prevention policies (fiscal, regulation, education, preventative treatment and screening) across seven public health domains (tobacco, alcohol, food and nutrition, reproductive health services, the control of infectious diseases, the environment and workplace regulations). It found that some policy interventions reduced health inequalities (e.g. food subsidy programmes, immunisations), others had no effect whilst some interventions appeared to increase inequalities (e.g. 20 mph and low emission zones).
4Is: Inequalities, Insurance, Incentives and Immigration: Challenges and Solutions for the Welfare State
When evaluating different policy programs, one typically investigate effects on employment, and income. This project illustrates how ex-ante policy evaluation can be performed in terms of richer concepts of individual well-being, such as subjective life satisfaction and equivalent incomes, and that the effect of potential reforms varies widely depending on the well-being concept used in the evaluation. The large inflow of migrants to the EU have raised concerns about the emergence of ethnically segregated neighbourhoods. Using rich geo-coded register data from Sweden, spanning over 20 years, the consortium analysed how an inflow of migrants affect natives moving patterns. An improved so-called “shift-share" approach that combines policy-induced initial immigrant settlements with exogenous contemporaneous immigration as captured by refugee shocks is applied. The project results indicate that preference for ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods may not be the dominant channel inducing flight.
ALMP provide incentives for job search especially among individuals with good labour market prospects, and help individuals with poor labour market prospects. The team tested this dual role of ALMP analyzing a Swedish youth activation programme. The consortium found that individuals with a high predicted probability of finding work respond to the threat of activation, whereas there is no effect for individuals with weak labour market prospects.
MIFARE: Migrants’ Welfare State Attitudes
Results from the project show that migrants have limited knowledge on when, after migration, their migrant group has access to social benefits. Although migrants have a better knowledge about access to health care (right after registration) and unemployment benefits (once migrants have formally worked in the residence country), they have hardly knowledge about entitlements to state pensions or social assistance schemes. This means that migrants could be much better informed about their social rights. Migrants vary strongly in the extent to which they perceive immediate access to welfare after immigration, but among none of the immigrant groups, more than a third perceives immediate access to all welfare domains. Instead, among immigrants groups from the US and Russia, more restricted access to welfare is perceived than factually is. The project also found that migrants from Japan and China prefer less government spending than natives. On the other hand, Spanish and Turkish migrants do prefer more spending. On some domains all migrant groups prefer less spending than natives do, e.g. in the domain of elderly care. The consortium also found that actual arrangements, as compared to country of origin arrangements, also affect people’s attitudes on government spending. For example, the results show large differences on attitudes to child care spending preferences between Dutch natives and migrants. Migrants, in particular those in higher status groups, prefer more government spending on child care in the Netherlands than Dutch native do. The MIFARE study challenges the idea that all immigrants are supportive of extended welfare state arrangements.
MobileWelfare: European Welfare Systems in Times of Mobility
The project makes a range of contributions to the field of which three innovative contributions are highlighted here. First of all the team was able to show that the so far dominant idea of a welfare operating as a general magnet effect is not found in Europe. Both at the macro and micro level, links between migration and welfare are much more complex, depending on life course stage, welfare domain and individual rights. Migrants in general did not have insights into welfare systems and arrangements and their welfare right before migration. This project’s results clearly contest accounts of an welfare magnet effect by revealing the complexity of migration motivations and decisions. A second key finding of the MobileWelfare project is that the experience of welfare is often transnational. After migration resources in both the country of destination and origin are used and onward migration decisions are include considerations of welfare in both origin and destination. As such, the findings challenge the spatial and national limitations often placed upon understandings of welfare practice and experience. The existing literature, largely overlooked the role of welfare regimes in origin countries on migration aspirations, decisions and practices resulting in a ‘receiving country bias’. The project findings point to the importance of welfare regimes and informal family provision in the origin country. This is evidenced through the assemblage of welfare that migrants construct across more than one nation state and with providers from the formal public and private sectors, the informal sector and the family. Third, the consortium was able to achieve a still rather uncommon multi-method approach in the project by combining analyses of secondary quantitative data, collecting primary data by carrying out around 350 qualitative interviews across 7 countries with a comparative interview guide across sides, as well as conducting an experimental factorial survey in three countries. The findings from each of these different methods answered part of the research puzzle but were also complementary in that their key findings all pointed in the same direction.
PORECAN: Policies and responses with regard to child abuse and neglect in England, Germany and the Netherlands: a comparative multi-site study
The innovative character of the project lies in the combination of comparative research on child protection systems at three levels: the policy, the practice and the clients’ (parents’) level. The policy analyses showed that child protection systems were keeping a local flavour, notwithstanding growing convergence between countries through international regulations. Unique in the project was the detailed analysis of case files. This allowed the team to trace step-by-step child maltreatment investigations, from report to decision. The large sample of case files per country and the cross-country comparisons were bringing a deeper understanding of this process, whereas the comparative policy analyses were helping to contextualize findings. Both the framework for the policy analyses and the coding scheme for the case file studies proved to be useful instruments and may help other researchers conduct cross-national comparative research in the field of child protection. Finally, the cross-national comparisons of parents’ views of child maltreatment investigations have been bringing new insights into how child protection systems and their professionals are perceived by clients and how investigations following reports of child maltreatment could be improved to the benefit of parents and children.
TransJudFare: Transnationalization and the judicialization of welfare
As intended, the research efforts of the TransJudFare project have mainly helped to further the empirical knowledge about the actual impact of the domestic effects of EU case law on cross-border welfare and citizenship rights. This has significantly helped to strengthen the understanding of the impact of European integration on national welfare states as well as the importance of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for national policy-making. Specifically, the project’s key findings are: the domestic reactions have been predominantly restrictive (= quarantining and containing ECJ case law), especially by legislatures and administrations, in order to guard national non-contributory benefit schemes from “welfare migration”; the issue of “welfare for EU citizens” became intensely negatively politicized in all five member states under investigation, supporting or even causing the restrictive domestic response pattern; the fiscal impact of EU free movement and extensive non-discrimination is – because of the restrictive member state policies – in most instances positive for the member states; the major costs of the restrictive implementation of EU free movement and non-discrimination rules have to be borne individually by EU citizens.
TRANSWEL: Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe: An Analysis of Portability Regimes of Social Security Rights
The project contributes to the study of intra-EU mobility, welfare and European social citizenship through a comparative examination of regulations, discourses and mobile Europeans’ experiences of cross-border social security and social rights portability (Amelina et al. forthcoming). It offers insights into the selectivity criteria of welfare provision in the four above-mentioned social security areas that lie at the heart of European cross-border social security governance. In addition, it identifies specific discourses of welfare belonging (gendered, ethnicized/racialized, class-related images of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’) that frame institutional selectivity by constructing images of mobile EU-citizens who either do or do not ‘deserve’ social membership. The project also provides a detailed examination of inequalities that mobile EU citizens from the new EU countries experience when trying to access and port social security rights across borders and reveals how these experiences are linked to the institutional selectivity criteria of European cross-border social security governance. The projects’ main outcome is that the institutional requirements of formal employment and long-term residence are the main selectivity criteria of European social security governance that generate the unequal welfare opportunities among mobile EU citizens. These welfare inequalities are framed by powerful discourses of welfare belonging with regard to largely non-desired Eastern European movers from the peripheries of the EU, only the self-sufficient of whom are regarded in a positive light. Most important, mobile EU citizens experience free movement as a vicious cycle of losses of welfare opportunities that result from individual decisions not to claim rights because of the barriers experienced and from perceptions of not being treated the same way as immobile welfare claimants.
UPWEB: Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage
The project has identified, within healthcare providers, a range of bricolage tactics which have been utilised in a bid to address some of the complex challenges they as providers face when working in superdiverse neighbourhoods. The team found that public healthcare systems are often constrained by managerial systems that deny them the flexibility that they need to address complex problems. They frequently work informally with NGOs, who themselves take a leading role, in providing services to individuals with complex problems. NGOs have a good sense of the healthcare ecosystem within superdiverse neighbourhoods and utilise this knowledge to cross-refer individuals i.e. who have immigration or addiction problems which underpin their health concerns. The intricate mix of social and health problems is not only an issue for migrants. The UPWEB project showed how combinations of austerity, poverty, addiction, low levels of education and low incomes shape people’s health concerns and their ability to mobilise resources to address those concerns. Finally, as planned at the outset of the project the consortium introduced a new concept to capture the complexity of healthcare seeking behaviours. The team moved from welfare bricolage to healthcare bricolage (but will in different circumstances use both), which is providing a new, original approach to the problem of integration of social and health care that may well spark debate.
WelfSOC: Welfare State Futures: Our Children’s Europe
This project successfully conducted co-ordinated deliberative forums to investigate attitudes and debate in the area of social policy across five European countries using similar instruments and materials. The project demonstrates that most people continue to support the main welfare state programmes, despite real concerns about cost and different degrees of confidence in their sustainability. The majority of people also endorse social investment programmes to secure better training, childcare and education for the mass of the population, on grounds of fairness in social democratic countries, economic efficiency in more corporatist and individual opportunity in more liberal ones, and regard immigration as a major issue in most countries. The UK stands out in terms of its exclusionary attitudes; elsewhere the topic is understood more in terms of social and cultural integration. The project also shows that most people remain committed to the intergenerational contract, with older people in richer countries being willing to make sacrifices in their own welfare entitlements. Finally, the project demonstrates that most people pay little attention to evidence or the standard procedures of scientific discourse in discussing welfare issues.
Potential Impact:
On a programme level, the WSF Scientific Programme Coordinator Prof. Ellen M. Immergut played a key role in highlighting the impact of the programme and the projects and in organizing dissemination activities for the joint results of the programme. A highly relevant dissemination activity was the WSF Final Conference that took place at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in May 2018. All individual WSF projects gave presentations at the Final Conference, which was attended by various stakeholders and policymakers, including representatives from the WHO and the OECD. In relation to the conference, the Scientific Programme Coordinator held the State of the Union Address on “Welfare State Futures: What Role for Solidarity” at the State of the Union Conference, 10-12 May 2018, at the European University Institute, using this as an opportunity to showcase the research findings of the Welfare State Futures Programme
Chief findings of the WSF programme will also be summarized in an overall scientific document in the form of a Palgrave Macmillan Pivot. Furthermore, a Policy Brief has been produced to disseminate key policy-relevant findings of the programme to stakeholders at the European level, including the European Commission. Other dissemination products include the WSF newsletter series, a multi-media animation with a focus on impact, a WSF Wikipedia site, and an article in the March 2018 issue of “EU Research” magazine. The Scientific Programme Coordinator also encouraged to highlight the importance of dissemination to the individual WSF projects, whose dissemination activities can be found below.
EXCEL: Exploring Comparative Effectiveness and efficiency in Long-term care
The results of this project will have an impact on how long-term care (LTC) services are organised and delivered in the future. First, the project has provided validated outcome tools that can be used by researchers and directly by LTC practitioners. Previous experience in England is that LTC professionals can use outcome indicators in managing the delivery of care services. Currently, there are no LTC related quality of life measures available in Finland. Availability of the translated and validated ASCOT instruments and the preference weights will fill this gap. Some use of the translated measure has already been realized in research and social care practice during the year 2018. It is expected that the use of the translated measures will expand in future once the EXCELC research findings on validation of the translated measures and Finnish preference weights have been published and disseminated. One important future societal impact of the EXCELC project in Finland will hence be the better access to a translated and validated LTC related quality of life measure.
ASCOT has also gained interest in Austria: one of the main care organisations have implemented ASCOT as an evaluation toolkit for their care managers (‘Pflegedienstleitungen’). An ongoing project of the Gesundheit Österreich (National Institute for Health) has social-care-related quality of life using ASCOT shortlisted as a recommended evaluation toolkit. Second, the project has impact through its analysis of service user and carer data collected in the project. The consortium is producing evidence about the effects of LTC in our partner countries, which will result in a range of papers.
The consortium has reached policy makers via the International Long-term care Policy Network (ILPN). In particular, the team presented recently at the 2018 meeting. ILPN is network of researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders that aims to promote the global exchange of evidence and knowledge on LTC policy. To reach both practitioner/professional and the wider academic community, the consortium used a combination of newsletters, blogs etc. As an example, to reach these audiences in Finland, the team has written four short newsletters in the THL OPTIMI newsletter about the research. The newsletter is published four times a year and it is widely circulated among researchers, decision-makers and practitioners of health and social care in Finland. In Austria, a series of presentations were held to inform long-term care organisations and national organisations about measuring outcomes of long-term care using ASCOT.
FACSK: Family complexity and social work. A comparative study of family-based welfare work in different welfare regimes
Various end-users, ranging from policy-makers to social workers, will gain new knowledge about different conceptions of the family and services provided from this project. Social policies have, with different degrees in European and Latin American countries, integrated specific cultural roots in which the family has the role to face social problems. The project addresses the improvement of competences for students and people working with interventions for vulnerable children and marginalised families. It follows the Europe 2020 (New skills for new jobs) and Lisbon Treaty goals of providing professionals with improved competencies to match the need of the labour market and to promote social cohesion and inclusion.
FACSK has been very active in disseminating research in the research community both in Europe and in Latin America, with over twenty presentations at international conferences. Through communicating research findings to social workers, managers and local politicians (social services), the research can have an impact on social work education in many countries, particularly family social work and working with families from different cultures. The research has received interest from policy makers in, among others, the UK, Norway and Sweden. Knowledge from the project may contribute to reformed social legislation, in particular the role of families can be addressed in a reformed way. The project organized activities such as conferences addressing several target groups simultaneously and local arrangements for communication with specific target groups.
FPRWS: Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state
The research project has provided new knowledge about how welfare states can meet new challenges.
In particular, it has provided a better understanding of what people view as fair and unfair inequalities. This insight is essential to ensure that concerns for personal responsibility can be integrated in the design of welfare schemes in a way that is perceived as fair. An important example of the direct impact of the research is provided by the field experiment conducted with the Norwegian Tax Administration. This experiment documented that a moral appeal could increase tax compliance and the letters to tax payers used in the experiment is currently used by the tax administration. Another example is the result that Dutch natives value the investment in a non-Western immigrant less than that of another Dutch native has societal impact. The result implies that at least some of the discrimination of non-Western immigrants often observed, for example in housing markets or job markets, is due to tastes of landlords or employers: some of them simply dislike immigrants. The policy prescription for policy makers who wish to reduce discrimination is different than if the discrimination would be only due to stereotypes. Stereotypes (although sometimes hardwired) can be corrected for by information provision but tastes are more difficult to change.
The result that agreement on redistribution policies is more difficult to find under uncertainty can impact
the design and communication of welfare policies. In particular, policies that make a clear link between
costs and benefits are more likely to obtain the endorsement of a large part of the population compared
to policies that entail uncertain elements. Moreover, policies that are characterized by high-risk highreturns are less likely to be supported by the majority compared to policies with the same expected
returns but lower risks.
The consortium has interacted directly with policy makers and given talks to numerous public agencies. The team also cooperated directly with the Norwegian Tax Administration. Furthermore, the results have been communicated to a general audience in the form of policy articles at Vox, public lectures and newspaper columns. The team also used social media actively and has built a large following on twitter and Facebook, which are now part of the media platform of the new research centre FAIR.
GIWeS Globalisation, Institutions and the Welfare State
This project provided new knowledge about how the welfare states can meet current challenges and how concerns for personal responsibility can be integrated in the design of welfare schemes in a way that is perceived as fair. A better understanding of the relation between globalization, inequality, and the welfare state is highly pertinent, because it will increase the knowledge base on which decisions are made. Furthermore, the project has significant impact because views on these linkages shape public debate and perceptions about policy options. The findings of the project have been aimed at the research community, policy makers, and the general public. Papers have been discussed at various meetings and seminars within the research community, and the results have been widely disseminated toward both policy-makers, the media, as well as the general public, for example by writing shorter pieces for newspapers and other outlets. In Norway, a series of articles have been published in the main business newspaper of the country.
In addition, the members of the consortium are active participants in the public debate and undertake large dissemination efforts to reach wide audiences. As such, they have been active in giving popular seminars for audiences in the public and private sector, for political parties and for interest organizations. In Norway, project participants have given at least ten of such presentations each year, including presentations at the Ministry of Trade, Trade Union Conferences, the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority and the Nordic Council.
GlobLabWS: Globalisation, Labour Markets, and the Welfare State
Globalization and welfare state issues are receiving a large and growing interest across Europe. The project’s findings contribute to economic and social policies by providing theoretical and empirical analyses of some of the issues being discussed. The results of this project are central to current socio-economic debates on the effectiveness and sustainability of welfare state institutions and provide policymakers with a deeper understanding of the key trade-offs entailed by different policy scenarios. Throughout the project, the consortium has aimed at reaching both the academic community and policy makers. The first group has been targeted mainly through academic publications/discussion papers and conference/workshop presentations.
The second group has been reached through participation in policy-oriented conferences and media interviews. Examples include interviews with various Swedish newspapers and magazines and with ZDF Television, and presentations at the OECD Global Forum on International Investment and the Forum on Globalization and Industrialization. The GlobLabWS final workshop, held in Aberdeen in August 2018, also involved participants from the OECD and Scottish Government. Furthermore, following a presentation to the Scottish Parliament, Lead Principal Investigator Catia Montagna was invited to become a (founding) member of the Expert Network on Social Security, Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe).
HEALTHDOX: The Paradox of Health State Futures
This research provides important insights for health governance and the political sustainability of health systems, as well as for the ability of European health systems to integrate newcomers to Europe and to the European Union. Understanding the impact of health systems on population health and population attitudes is of clear societal relevance. In addition to the scientific community, which has been addressed through refereed journal articles, participation in major international conferences, and the project’s forthcoming book, the consortium aimed to reach health policymakers and stakeholders. To this end, the team has assembled a stakeholders’ data set (75 contacts), distributed across the fields of: Experts (researchers working at universities, research institutes/centers, institutes for public health, international organizations, think-tanks, 68%), Government Officials (Ministers of Health, people working in ministries of health, 10%), Professionals (doctors, nurses, members of professional associations and trade unions, 12%), Politicians (7%), Media (journalists, 3%).
To name one example, the team has been in contact with the German Ministry of Health throughout the duration of the project, and will continue to maintain contact. The consortium also invited such stakeholders to the project meetings, although there was a somewhat low attendance, not because of lack of interest but owing to other pressing duties. Therefore, the main outreach activities will take place when the Handbook is published, in the form of a book launch and events in the project’s individual countries. The project’s main user group comprises the members of the research departments of the National Health Ministries. These and other stakeholders have already expressed very active interest in the project’s Health Handbook, and the consortium will build on this with follow-up mailings and meetings, such as presentations in the ministries by the authors. For example, the Latvian author will be presenting his chapter in a series of public events organized by his university. In addition, a follow-up article on Innovation in Health Governance for the Hertie School of Government Handbook in Health Governance (Oxford University Press) that includes “best practices” is planned for March 2019.
HiNEWS: Health inequalities in European welfare states
HiNews has highlighted the extent of health inequalities across Europe, and has offered tentative solutions which may be pursued by policy makers to reduce differences in health between groups of people. In terms of outputs, around 50 peer-reviewed publications have been published from the HiNews research and the findings have been picked up by national press. In addition, the HiNews team has worked collaboratively with a range of partners, including Eurohealthnet, to disseminate the results to policy makers and practitioners across the European Union member states – raising awareness of the extent of inequalities in European countries and the policies which may be used to reduce the differences in health amongst different socioeconomic groups.
Dissemination activities include presentations for policymakers and civil society and policy seminars at e.g. EC Health and WHO events. Lead Principal Investigator Clare Bambra has been appointed to the WHO Europe Scientific Advisory Group on health equity and as a result will be supporting the development of WHO policy in this area. Furthermore, the results of the project’s Work Package C on ‘The welfare state, healthcare systems, and social inequalities in mortality’ will be included as part of an Oxford University Press book on healthcare systems which is currently under review. Promotional activities around this book will ensure that the research results are promoted after the funding period.
4Is: Inequalities, Insurance, Incentives and Immigration: Challenges and Solutions for the Welfare State
The findings of the project are a crucial input to governments’ decisions on how to finance the welfare system and redistribute income while maintaining incentives to work and avoiding poverty traps. The conducted work, especially in Strands 1 and 2 on ‘Inequality, well-being and the welfare state’ and ‘Preferences for the welfare state’, will be important input to policy makers designing tax- and benefit systems. The project’s research results from Strand 3, on ‘The costs and effects of tax incentives’, will speak to the evaluation of the longer term impacts of taxes on the economy.
The research is aimed at both the research community and policy makers. To reach the first group, the team members have presented their work at many international conferences and as invited speakers to universities and research institutes. Also, various papers will eventually be submitted to international scientific journals. The second group has been targeted with policy reports, team members being invited to different governmental offices etc., and interviews of team members in the national media. For example, the Finnish team presented at a public policy event of the VATT Institute for Economic Research, on ‘Incentives and Inequality: A Microsimulation Approach’. A publication on ‘Native Migration Responses to Increased Immigration’ was also published in the ifo DICE Report, an English-language journal featuring articles on institutional regulations and economic policy measures that offer country comparative analyses.
MIFARE: Migrants’ Welfare State Attitudes
The project highlights the relevance of knowledge among immigrants about the eligibility. The project found that migrants are often not aware of when after arrival they have access to welfare state provisions. In particular knowledge about the access to pensions and social assistance are found to be problematic. Migrants are well aware of the access to health care and unemployment.
Migrants also vary, just like the native population, in the extent they support more government spending on welfare. On certain domains, migrants are stronger opponents to larger government investments to welfare than natives. The project contributes to nuancing how migrants relate to the welfare state and shows clearly the diversity among migrants in their support for welfare state arrangements. Moreover, some immigrants also propose a more restricted access for immigrants in general. Migrants perceive some of the welfare arrangements as problematic, like child care support in the Netherlands. There, migrants support a much stronger investment from the government than natives do.
The data from the project have been archived for the scientific community and since Fall 2017, various publications have been generated. Based on these publications, the consortium has been informing the wider audience. Once a publication is realized, a popular version has been sent to relevant websites (e.g. socialevraagstukken.nl in the Netherlands). Policymakers have expressed serious interest in the project’s findings. The project has been used for government advisement in Denmark, where policymakers and advisors asked for a professional publication. In the Netherlands, findings are shared with representatives from the Dutch Institute for Social Research that informs the Ministries and the UWV, which is the Dutch organisation that deals with labour market insurances. In September 2018, a policy brief was conducted in The Hague, to inform policymakers about the findings from the project (together with the MobileWelfare project).
The findings of the project are also shared in blogs, social media and the traditional media. They also form the basis for the policy brief and professional publications still planned by the consortium. In Demark, the MIFARE findings are used to discuss assumptions behind the Danish government plan to combat what is labelled “Parallel societies” (Initiative launched by the government in February 2018).
MobileWelfare: European Welfare Systems in Times of Mobility
Migration and welfare are high on the societal and political agenda. Debates are sometimes guided by specific perceptions, where this study can provide the facts. Communication of the main findings in that sense may help to de-myth certain expectations or assumptions and fuel a fact based discussion on the issues at stake. The relevant users of the project findings include academics, policy makers, civil society organisations working on migrant and/or welfare issues, and practitioners working both on migration/integration issues and in the broader social welfare arena including advisors providing information and/or support on welfare or migration issues to mobile Europeans.
Findings have been presented to the scientific community via international publications and presentations. The results have been presented to policy makers via presentations and easy accessible short publications. Policy makers at the national level have been interested in the project and team members have been invited for presentations and participation in exchanges with the policy field. These include presentations at a conference organized by the National Bank of Poland and the Polish Social Insurance Institution, a MICARD conference and the IMISCOE annual conference. In addition, a final policy briefing for Dutch policymakers took place in The Hague at the end of 2018.
PORECAN: Policies and responses with regard to child abuse and neglect in England, Germany and the Netherlands: a comparative multi-site study
The comparative policy analyses may have societal impact on policy makers from different countries, since these analyses help them to understand better the child protection system in their own country. Policy makers may learn from these analyses about the strengths and the limits of the system in their own country and how their system may be improved to the benefit of children and families. The case file study may have impact on professionals, who are involved in child maltreatment investigations. The study shows how these investigations are put into practice and how they are documented in each of the countries and makes clear how professionals actually work and what happens with reports. The case file study also shows which types of maltreatment are reported and which are not or underreported (compared to other countries). This may help professionals to gain more insight in their work and may also open debate on how to improve the investigations. The reflections on what is reported may also make professionals aware of the categories and definitions of child maltreatment that are used in their country and how these may guide reports and investigations. The interview study on parents’ views of the investigation has an added value both for policy makers in the field of child protection and professionals in the services. It is one of the few studies on parents’ voices on child maltreatment investigations. As for the policy analysis and the case file study, results of the interviews with parents may help to improve child protection systems in the different countries and make them more ‘child-friendly’.
In the first year, the project’s dissemination activities were mainly aimed at announcing the project to other researchers, to expand the group of stakeholders and to explain the project to the scientific community and practice field. Moreover, activities were aimed to inform stakeholders and local and international scientific community about the progress and the results. From the second year on, dissemination activities were focused on the findings of the three studies per country, the cross-national comparisons and the methods that were used. The team has been active on the project website, social media and via newsletters directed at stakeholders. The team also had at regular times meetings with key stakeholders to make them aware of the project, recruit them for the dissemination efforts and inform them about the progress
The results of the policy analyses were presented at EUSARF 2016 international conference on child welfare and the policy briefings of Germany, the Netherlands and England were published on our website. The results of the case file study and the study on parents’ views were presented during the project Summer School in Groningen, at the European ISPCAN conference on child abuse and neglect in The Hague, at the symposium of the International Decision-Making Network in Basel, at the International Colloquium on Child Protection in Latin America and Europe in Mexico, and at the EUSARF 2018 international conference on child welfare in Porto. In addition, all national teams organized local meetings for the representatives and the professionals of the sites that participated in the case file and the interview study. Furthermore, the UK team was awarded additional funding for dissemination and impact-building activities by their national research council. The grant was used to fund dissemination activities in the four participating local authorities, the production of briefings on the study for wider dissemination across the UK and, a pilot study of children’s perceptions of the child protection process, which involve consultation with groups of children in care and interviews with individual children.
TransJudFare: Transnationalization and the judicialization of welfare
At least five of the core findings of the TransJudFare project are highly relevant for current public debates about free movement in the European Union, potentially influencing these discussions effectively: 1) the EU Member states are able to employ different strategies to guard their welfare institutions from non-working EU citizens on the move; 2) especially, the universal, Nordic welfare state fares well under non-discrimination and free movement, because of its regulated labour market; 3) under extreme conditions, however, free movement can undermine national welfare state arrangements; 4) the major costs of the restrictive implementation of EU free movement and non-discrimination rules have to be borne individually by EU citizens; 5) the European Court of Justice seems to be responsive to the recent politicization of free movement and welfare rights for mobile EU citizens.
As intended, the research efforts of the TransJudFare project have significantly helped to strengthen the understanding of the impact of European integration on national welfare states as well as the importance of the European Court of Justice for national policy-making. The consortium held various presentations for policy makers, including at the Danish Ministry for Employment, the Danish Parliament, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the European Policy Centre. Furthermore, the team published in several media outlets, including television, newspapers, and magazines.
TRANSWEL: Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe: An Analysis of Portability Regimes of Social Security Rights
The project results provide insights into the strategies mobile Europeans use to deal with cumulative disadvantages and reveals how these disadvantages are incorporated into migrants’ multi-local life worlds. In doing so, the consortium could see the direct implications of the tension between legal freedom of movement and de facto discrimination for mobile EU citizens on the ground. These findings are of high relevance both for policy makers as well as for concerned mobile EU citizens.
The results of the research are aimed at the scientific community, policy makers and interested members of NGOs and civil society. To this end, the consortium presented the results at academic conferences as well as at venues open to the interested non-academic public. The team further aimed at publishing both in peer-reviewed journals and media addressing a more general public. Dissemination activities included acting as expert in television programmes and radio interviews, expert presentations at e.g. the European Parliament and the Platform for European NGOs working on Family (coFAM), the publication of policy briefs, and presentations at conferences such as ESPAnet Austria, IMISCOE and the Nordic Council Annual Meeting.
UPWEB: Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage
The findings of this project have described the complexity of healthcare seeking in neighbourhoods characterised by migration-driven diversity. The evidence from the project has been very timely in filling in the picture of the strategies and tactics adopted by neighbourhood populations made up of new arrivals, longer standing and resident populations and how these needs are met by providers. Our findings have made visible unofficial work undertaken by patients and professionals that is not accounted for. This is important in understanding the particular demands and opportunities that diverse neighbourhoods represent.
The consortium has sought to have immediate, short-term impact by speaking with policy makers and politicians from local to national level, as well as seeking to write up the results in journal articles and book chapters for longer-term impact. The project has produced different materials for different audiences, for example policy briefing papers for policymakers and working papers for specialised audiences. The team participated in workshops at the national and European levels, informing policy makers on healthcare for asylum seekers and refugees. This took place at the European level, at a workshop for MEPs on women’s healthcare needs and at a Turkish high-level workshop for civil servants, as well as at local level, at stakeholders’ meetings and discussions with politicians and citizen associations.
The project’s Lead Principal Investigator Jenny Phillimore was also invited to contribute to the Best Brains Exchange to outline some of the challenges and opportunities around providing healthcare for diverse communities. Furthermore, the project’s final event was attended by major international NGOs and the World health Organisation.
WelfSOC: Welfare State Futures: Our Children’s Europe
The main project results are relevant to those involved in practical policy in relation to 1) how consultations are carried out and how policy ideas and choices are communicated; 2) social investment is an idea whose time has come. It can be promoted in a number of ways with different aspects of greater interest to specific groups; 3) the intergenerational contract may have the potential for revision in richer societies where there are currently pressures on public spending and provision in pensions and other services is very good; 4) immigration is a key issue and, in some countries, demands greater efforts to achieve integration; and 5) poverty is not an issue which people immediately identify as requiring welfare interventions in the future, except in Slovenia.
The project addressed academic communities, primarily in Europe, through the publication of articles in high quality journals, special issues, academic books, presentation of papers at academic conferences and engagement with professional associations. Policy-making and civil service communities at national and international level have been addressed through targeted presentations, e.g. at the House of Commons. Furthermore, wider non-academic communities have been addressed through engagement with the media and through blogs, including at the project website, the Guardian, and the Social Policy Association.
List of Websites:
WSF website: https://welfarestatefutures.org/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)
NORFACE website: https://www.norface.net/program/wsf/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)
Contact details:
Anne Cukier, NORFACE Coordination Office
Social Sciences and Humanities Domain
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
Laan van Nieuw Oost-Indië 300
2593 CE The Hague, the Netherlands
Tel: +31 703440503.
E-mail: a.cukier@nwo.nl
Since 2004 the NORFACE Network has proven itself as a successful coordinated common action of currently nineteen national research funding agencies. NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe) has offered unique opportunities for participating funding agencies by developing common research funding instruments, thus creating opportunities for facilitating and building new networks of research collaboration in the social sciences. By strengthening and promoting co-operation amongst member organisations, NORFACE is contributing to the realisation of the European Research Area in the Social Sciences.
The development of welfare systems was one of the defining characteristics of the 20th century, especially in Europe. However, in times of change, it is important to re-think 'the welfare state'. The title of the NORFACE ERA-NET Plus programme “Welfare State Futures” emphasizes that the future is not pre-determined. Countries have choices about how to respond to economic and social challenges, and their choices will shape the future of their welfare states. Research on the welfare state is a well-developed field in social science, based on various theoretical approaches and a long tradition of comparative studies. However, the aim of this programme call is to encourage innovative thinking: to stimulate novel research questions, to orient research towards the future, and to bring disciplines together in collective and comparative projects. In these ways, it hopes to foster theoretical, conceptual and methodological innovation.
The programme is funded by fifteen NORFACE partners, the Swedish council Forte and the European Commission. With eighteen million euro from the research programme “Welfare State Futures”, NORFACE has funded fifteen transnational research projects that have started in 2015. The fifteen teams with 59 principal investigators have been researching topics ranging from health inequalities, globalisation, families, migration and social security rights, to citizens’ support for the welfare state. In these projects, researchers from a wide variety of disciplines have been working together across Europe, from Slovenia to Norway and Estonia to Portugal, and have been looking beyond Europe too. Professor Ellen M. Immergut has been appointed as Scientific Programme Coordinator.
The fifteen transnational projects have been approaching this relevant theme from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. The aim of the transnational and interdisciplinary projects has been to analyse the societal, economic, political and legal contexts in which the welfare state will develop in the future and to understand better the logic of its evolution. By doing so they enable and encourage multi-disciplinary research and offer a fruitful European approach, with opportunities for comparison. The Welfare State Futures research programme advances globally excellent research which holds the promise of theoretical, methodological and empirical advance.
The programme also has been seeking to promote research-based knowledge and insight which has societal, practical and policy relevance. This programme includes work in a variety of social science disciplines, including demography, economics, education, human geography, law, political science, political theory, psychology, social policy and sociology. The programme has an open approach to research, encourages inter-disciplinary and comparative analysis, with micro-macro-level analyses and inter-linkages between thematic fields. While the focus is on the European experience, the programme also has been looking outside of Europe to understand better European future developments.
The programme is unique and constitutes a step change in scale and scope for social sciences research programming on Welfare State Futures. Furthermore, by discussing national and international strategic initiatives, developing mechanisms to exploit data and by co-ordinating a joint approach, NORFACE contributes to the developments of a European data infrastructure for the Social Sciences.
Project Context and Objectives:
The NORFACE Welfare State Futures Programme was designed to ask, and answer, fundamental questions about the design, delivery and experience of welfare in the 21st century from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. The programme features a Europe-wide network of researchers gathered around fifteen large projects comprising 60 principal investigators and nearly 200 affiliated researchers. The fields of inquiry can be captured by five main research clusters: Health; Migration; Welfare State Attitudes; Child and Family Welfare; and Globalization, Welfare States and Inequalities. Communication, network-building and synergy effects cutting across the projects has been fostered by a series of eight Thematic Workshops on the themes of Migration, Diversity and Welfare; the Future of Child and Family Welfare Policy; Inequality and Welfare States; Welfare and Migration; Welfare State Attitudes: the Social Legitimacy of Our Future Welfare State; Health Politics, Health Policy, Long-Term Care and Inequalities; Welfare State Reforms and Welfare State Attitudes; Dynamic Panel models; as well as a Final Conference and joint publications.
As a whole, the project results demonstrate that European Welfare States are resilient, and that social solidarity is alive and well in Europe. Indeed, using innovative methods, many of our projects have demonstrated that the vast majority of Europeans are welcoming to newcomers and are willing to lend a helping hand, but are also worried about the future. Public support for solidarity within and between European countries has become frayed after years of austerity, and the series of crises that have hit Europe. As part of a general suspicion of globalization, the European Union has been blamed for austerity, and the welfare state viewed as its victim—political framing put to excellent use by the radical right. Our research has documented the seriousness of these social and political problems. But it has also been able to pinpoint some key empirical evidence that is very relevant for addressing these issues. We provide hard evidence that immigrants to Europe do not come for the benefits, do not access benefits at higher rates than natives, and indeed pay in more in taxes than they take out in benefits. Nevertheless, the burden on European welfare states in coping with free-movement of citizens should not be simply ignored. Lack of clear jurisprudence about portability of social benefits has left much uncertainty on the ground, and owing to differences in welfare state design, some national programs are being overwhelmed by foreign claimants.
Our studies of work activation, health inequalities, and long-term care have important consequences for the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, and these have been incorporated into a European Elections Policy Paper that is presented in Brussels in March 2019. WSF research findings have already been published in over 200 refereed journal articles and university press books, many of which are available in open access and electronic formats, as well as additional policy briefs and working papers. The programme has fostered a pan-European network of both senior and younger researchers who are continuing their work on Welfare State Futures and providing a platform for further work in this areas. Thus, the programme has met its goals of scientific achievement; policy-relevant research dissemination; and capacity-building.
Professor Ellen M. Immergut, European University Institute, Italy
Scientific Programme Coordinator of the NORFACE Welfare State Futures programme
EXCEL: Exploring Comparative Effectiveness and efficiency in Long-term care
Prof. J.E. Forder, University of Kent at Canterbury; Dr. I.E.O. Linnosmaa, National Institute for Health and Welfare; J.N. Malley, London School of Economics; Dr. B. Trukeschitz, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business
This project proposed a cross-country study to measure outcomes in the field of long-term care (LTC). The project used a care-related outcome tool, ASCOT, to assess the comparative effectiveness and efficiency of non-institutional LTC (e.g. home care) for older adults and their informal carers in Austria, England and Finland. The study had four analytical work packages with these goals: Establish a valid basis for international comparisons of LTC-outcomes in non-institutional settings, by developing rigorously translated and tested versions of ASCOT; generate country-specific ASCOT utility weights and explore variations in preferences for ASCOT quality of life domains across countries; explore variations in ASCOT-quality of life (QoL) within and between countries, providing evidence on QoL for service users, carers and the relationship between them, as well as QoL inequalities; explore and compare the relative costs, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of specific LTC services.The team used econometric methods, combining estimates of the effect of services on QoL and service cost.
FACSK: Family complexity and social work. A comparative study of family-based welfare work in different welfare regimes
Prof. S.O.L. Nygren, Umea University; Prof. S. Oltedal, University of Stavanger; Prof. S.J.B. White, University of Sheffield
The purpose of this project was to analyse how social workers across different contexts understand notions of family and how they describe their own practices and outcomes with families. The study used empirical data from eight countries (Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, Chile, Mexico, Lithuania and Bulgaria) representing four different family policy regimes (de-familialised, partly de-familialised, familialised and re-familialised). Existing data relevant to family policies from Eurostat, the OECD and other databases was used. Additional national statistics and documents detailing the organisational structure of services was collected. Thirty two focus groups (eight countries; four service areas) were held using semi-structured interviews and case vignettes, engaging researchers from the three university partners of Sweden, Norway and UK, with co-operation partners in the other five countries.
FPRWS: Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state
Prof. A.W. Cappelen, NHH Norwegian School of Economics; Prof. S. Kuhnle, University of Bergen; Dr. S. Suetens, Tilburg University; Prof. J.R. Tyran, University of Vienna
The aim of this project was to analyse how fairness considerations, in particular with respect to personal responsibility, affect the support and effectiveness of welfare policies. This project provided new knowledge about how the welfare states can meet current challenges and how concerns for personal responsibility can be integrated in the design of welfare schemes in a way that is perceived as fair. Part A of the research project studied how people attribute personal responsibility for outcomes and the link between views about personal responsibility and the support for redistributive welfare policies. Part B of the research project studied people's preferences in situations where it is impossible to implement the welfare policies that are seen as most fair. In Part C of the research project the consortium studied what they referred to as reference-dependent social preferences and examined whether such preferences might shed light on cross-country differences in the support for welfare schemes. Four research teams from three countries; Austria, Norway and the Netherlands, took a cross-disciplinary perspective on fairness and used an innovative combination of methods, including lab and field experiments, survey studies and collection of administrative data.
GIWeS Globalisation, Institutions and the Welfare State
Prof. K.O. Moene, University of Oslo; Prof. C. Dustmann, University College London; Prof. O. Raaum, Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research; Prof. R. Winter-Ebmer, Johannes Kepler University Linz
Focussing on the global changes since 1989, the objective of GIWeS was to produce first class research on how trade, technology and the welfare state interact; on the challenges to national welfare states in an integrated European labour market, and on the political support for reform. The project was unique in several dimensions: it was comparative, focussing on countries that differ in their industry base, skill structure, and welfare institutions; it was relevant, addressing the financial crisis, migration and the support for welfare spending; it was dynamic, drawing on unique longitudinal information that allowed the team to explore long term impacts of global shocks down to the individual firm and the individual worker; it was innovative, linking for the first time administrative longitudinal data covering entire populations across countries allowing us to follow individuals across national borders, investigating their choices in work environments and welfare institutions; it was wide-ranging, capturing how globalization makes competition more dynamic, speeding up innovation, and the process of creative destruction, and how wide-ranging changes may give rise to a new political and economic equilibrium.
GlobLabWS: Globalisation, Labour Markets, and the Welfare State
Prof. C. Montagna, University of Aberdeen; Dr. H. Görg, Kiel Institute for World Economics; Prof. F. Sjöholm, Lund University
This pan-European collaborative project aimed to study the interaction between the welfare state (WS), globalization, and labour markets in determining a country’s aggregate performance. The consortium first studied how the WS shapes the effects of globalisation on individual labour market outcomes, with a focus on the role of competitive selection between firms and labour market matching processes. This provided the foundations for the second part of the project that examined the implications of a country’s WS policies on its aggregate employment and productivity. Methodologically, the project consisted of both theoretical and empirical work. Theoretical models helped identifying the channels through which WS policies affect microeconomic adjustments to globalisation and, through these, macroeconomic performance. Empirical comparative analyses both assessed the theory’s testable hypotheses and identified important stylised facts from inter-country comparative analysis.
HEALTHDOX: The Paradox of Health State Futures
Prof. E.M. Immergut, European University Institute; Dr. M. Ainsaar, Tartu University; Dr. K.M. Anderson, Radboud University; Prof. M. Asensio, Technical University of Lisbon; Dr. P. Blomqvist, Uppsala University; Dr. C. Devitt, Trinity College Dublin; Dr. M. Oskarson, University of Gothenburg
HEALTHDOX aimed to explore future trajectories of European health politics and policies through an investigation of the impact of recent health reforms on health inequalities, health expenditures, and public attitudes towards both the health system and the welfare state. This project investigated health policy developments from 1990 to the present in, among others, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. The impact of these policy changes were analysed using quantitative data found in both national and international sources. The comparative and transnational design of the project allowed the consortium to provide insights into health inequalities, the meaning of the welfare state for individuals, and the future politics of the welfare state, as well as to provide health policy-makers with important feedback on their policies.
HiNEWS: Health inequalities in European welfare states
Prof. dr. C. Bambra, University of Newcastle; Dr. T.A. Eikemo, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Dr. T.H.M. Huijts, University of York; Prof. dr. C. Wendt, University of Siegen
This project focused on the following question: why do social inequalities in health persist in European welfare states and what can be done to reduce them? The project consisted of six interrelated work packages delivered across three project phases. In the first phase, the consortium provided theoretical elaboration on the pathways whereby welfare states and healthcare systems influence the aetiology and reduction of social inequalities in health. In the second phase, the team explored and tested these pathways using morbidity and mortality indicators. The consortium also evidenced review methods to examine the effects of macro policy interventions in reducing health inequalities. In the third phase, they combined the work packages to produce country specific policy toolkits. The team used a variety of cutting edge data sources at the micro and macro level and employed state-of-the-art statistical techniques, such as counterfactual policy analyses and multilevel models.
4Is: Inequalities, Insurance, Incentives and Immigration: Challenges and Solutions for the Welfare State
Prof. E. Mörk, Uppsala University; Prof. M. Brewer, University of Essex; Prof. K. Kotakorpi, University of Turku; Prof. J. Pirttilä, University of Tampere
This research project examined how recent challenges, such as increased economic uncertainty and ethnic diversity, have affected inequality and support for the welfare state in European countries. It also investigated the work incentives embedded in the existing tax- and benefit systems and how these affect individuals’ behaviour, both in the short and in the long run. The project was divided into three strands. The team first measured inequality developments using multidimensional and lifetime perspectives, and assessed how different EU tax and benefit systems reduce economic vulnerability. Second, the consortium investigated support for redistribution, asking how ethnic diversity affects people’s support for the welfare state and, using methods from experimental psychology, examining the determinants of redistributive attitudes for different groups. Third, the team investigated the work incentives embedded in the existing tax and benefit systems and how these affect individuals’ behaviour, both in the short and in the long run, taking into account issues like the complexity of the tax design.
MIFARE: Migrants’ Welfare State Attitudes
Dr. M. Lubbers, Radboud University; Prof. dr. C. Diehl, University of Konstanz; Prof. C.A. Larsen, Aalborg University
This project was among the first to focus on migrants’ attitudes towards the welfare state. The consortium aimed to study migrants’ welfare state attitudes, and to explain differences across migrant groups, as well as differences compared to the overall public opinion in the country of origin and the host country. The team relied on existing cross-national datasets such as the ISSP. However, the consortium also proposed a harmonized and unique data collection among migrants in the destination countries Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. The consortium composed a team with expertise on data collection among migrants, on public opinion research, and expertise on welfare state attitudes in particular.
MobileWelfare: European Welfare Systems in Times of Mobility
Prof. dr. H.A.G. de Valk, Nederlands Interdisciplinair Demografisch Instituut; Prof. dr. M.L. Fonseca, University of Lisbon; Dr. H.G. de Haas, University of Oxford; Dr. P. Kaczmarczyk, University of Warsaw
This project aimed to understand the role of welfare systems in destination and origin countries for migration patterns within and towards Europe. The project moved beyond prior studies on the contested existence of welfare magnets and the presumed threat of (low-skilled) migration to the viability of welfare state benefits, and addressed three research questions: How and to what extent do welfare systems affect mobility patterns in Europe? To what extent and how do perceptions of access to welfare arrangements in origin and destination countries shape migration decisions? What role does transferability of welfare accounts play in mobility across Europe? The project combined macro and micro perspectives, and applied a mixed-methods approach of innovative analysis of existing statistics and migration data added with new primary data collection via case studies in seven countries. It went beyond reductionist categorisations of receiving and sending countries by considering all case study countries simultaneously as origins and destinations.
PORECAN: Policies and responses with regard to child abuse and neglect in England, Germany and the Netherlands: a comparative multi-site study
Prof. H.W.E. Grietens, University of Groningen; Prof. N. Biehal, University of York; Prof. S. Walper, German Youth Institute
The PORECAN project aimed to discover the nature and impact of variations in child protection systems through a comparison of three quite different welfare states (England, Germany, the Netherlands). It included a comparative analysis of child protection policy and empirical studies of child protection practice. Findings from the policy analysis underpinned the empirical phase, which compared (i) state responses to child maltreatment notifications and (ii) parent perspectives on professional intervention in different welfare states. The team compared: the ways child protection measures are negotiated, legitimized and perceived (by professionals and parents); their impact on children (e.g. protection/re-abuse; removal from home); the relationship between national policy, thresholds for intervention and social justice; rhetoric in child protection policy and practice, locating this within the wider child welfare policy framework in each country. The study also compared wider assumptions about the role of the state in family life, (including those regarding the rights of parents) and the ways different welfare states seek to balance children’s rights to protection (under the UNCRC) and parents’ rights to family life (under the Human Rights Act).
TransJudFare: Transnationalization and the judicialization of welfare
Prof. dr. S.K. Schmidt, University of Bremen; Dr. M. Blauberger, University of Salzburg; Prof. dr. G.T. Davies, VU University; Prof. D.S. Martinsen, University of Copenhagen
TransJudFare dealt with two challenges for welfare states in the European Union: the transnationalization of citizenship and welfare rights and the judicialization of politics. TransJudFare focused on social assistance measures and study grants and asked how member states respond to European case law at the level of lower courts, the administration, and the legislature. Teams of political scientists and lawyers in four member states mapped changes in five western EU member states according to a unified approach, joining forces in the analyses along different dimensions. Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK were chosen as they are all targeted by migration flows but differ in important respects such as welfare state type and judicial system. The project was institutional, asking whether the European welfare state survives the transformation, and what will happen to its different incarnations such as the Scandinavian, the German and the British model. It was spot on all five themes of the programme, organized around international research groups in London, Linz and Oslo, with additional partners.
TRANSWEL: Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe: An Analysis of Portability Regimes of Social Security Rights
Prof. dr. A.A. Amelina, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main; Prof. dr. E.C. Carmel, University of Bath
Prof. dr. A.R. Runfors, Södertörn University; Prof. dr. E.S. Scheibelhofer, University of Vienna
This project focused on the portability of social security rights in the enlarged European Union; that is, the rights to health insurance and to unemployment, retirement and family-related benefits. The project involved a comparative analysis, which traced the migrations of regularly and irregularly employed migrants and their family members and the portability of their social security rights between four pairs of countries: Hungary-Austria, Bulgaria-Germany, Poland-United Kingdom and Estonia-Sweden. First, the project examined legal regulations on the portability of social security rights. Second, it analysed a variety of mobile EU citizens' practices of portability, including limitations to portability they may involve. Third, the project reconstructed discourses of belonging incorporated into portability regulations to determine how they shape individuals' access to social security. Fourth, it provided insights into individuals' inequality experiences resulting from limitations to portability. Building on a transnational comparison of the four pairs of countries, the project then reconstructed variations in the portability of social security rights.
UPWEB: Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage
Prof. dr. J.A. Phillimore, University of Birmingham; Dr. H. Bradby, Uppsala University; Prof. M. Knecht, University of Bremen; Prof. B. Padilla, University of Minho
This project reconceptualised welfare theory through responding to the question of how all residents living in superdiverse neighbourhoods access healthcare. Using innovative techniques including street-mapping, community research and a mobile phone app alongside a neighbourhood survey, the consortium explored the multiple approaches that residents living in superdiverse neighbourhoods use to meet their health needs, encompassing the perspectives of service users and providers. The team generated new theoretical and practical insights through the development of models of welfare bricolage: the practice by which individuals combine formal, informal and virtual health services across public, private and third sectors in an attempt to meet need. The team used a comparative/sequential approach to interrogate local welfare states across eight deprived and upwardly mobile superdiverse neighbourhoods in four different national welfare states (UK, Portugal, Germany and Sweden) each with different welfare, health and migration regimes.
WelfSOC: Welfare State Futures: Our Children’s Europe
Prof. P.F. Taylor-Gooby, University of Kent at Canterbury; Prof. J. Goul Andersen, Aalborg University; Prof. M.F. Hrast, University of Ljubljana; Prof. B. Hvinden, NOVA - Norwegian Social Research; Prof. S. Mau, University of Bremen
How European welfare states will develop is hard to predict. This project used innovative methods (deliberative democratic forums, a qualitative cross-national focus group survey) to develop understanding of people’s aspirations for the Europe their children will inhabit. The interactive and discursive methods proposed dealt directly with people’s ideas, but have rarely been used in comparative welfare studies. The project was essentially forward-looking. It contributed to theoretical work on the main cleavages and solidarities driving social policy in different European welfare states and to more practical consideration of the parameters of acceptable policy change. It supplied new findings relevant to the politics and sociology of welfare and provide data for reanalysis and as a base-line in future studies. The team had led major cross-national projects and pressed home findings in national and EU-level policy debate.
Project Results:
EXCEL: Exploring Comparative Effectiveness and efficiency in Long-term care
Long-term care (LTC) is an increasingly major component of the welfare state, yet little is known about its impact. The project’s overarching contribution has been to provide policy-makers, professionals, and academics with the tools and methods to systematically measure LTC outcomes. First, the consortium developed and validated outcomes tools for Austria and Finland, based on the English Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT). The project also established the relative value of (preferences for) the effects of LTC in improving key aspects of LTC-related quality of life measured by ASCOT, for carers and cared-for people. The team measured – for the first time – preferences for Austrian and Finnish service user’s LTC-QoL and English carer’s LTC-QoL, and compared different data collection methods. Second, the consortium collected unique datasets in Austria and Finland on outcomes of people using LTC: 493 and 633 service users and 254 and 350 carers in Finland and Austria respectively. This is an invaluable resource in understanding the (comparative) effectiveness of care, already used to validate the new ASCOT measures. The team continue to analyse differences in LTC-QoL impact across the three countries. Third, the project provided lessons about overcoming the practical and methodological challenges of evaluating outcomes in frail populations.
FACSK: Family complexity and social work. A comparative study of family-based welfare work in different welfare regimes
The FACSK project provides a comparative analysis of social work with families with complex needs.
Different countries vary due to: family policies; laws and values; service structures and the access to organisational resources; social worker's professional values; and, the problem pressure in terms of seriousness and complexity of the difficulties families face related to children at risk, addictions, mental health and migration. Empirical findings of the FACSK study show that the family plays a crucial role in social work that addresses complex needs. Social work is conditioned by the welfare regime in which it is carried out, and traits of de-familisation vs. familialism are filtered down to the street-level work of social workers. However, social workers in different welfare systems exert discretion in a way that partly reduces the impact of this, especially in the field of child welfare, where the significance of the family is emphasised in all countries of the study. Theoretically, the project adds to welfare regime theory by its focus on context and practice in personal social services, and contributes to complexity theory in social work. The project addresses the improvement of competences for students and people working with interventions for vulnerable children and marginalised families.
FPRWS: Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state
The project has conducted the first experimental study to understand how people make decisions
about income distribution in situations where decision makers lack information about the source of inequality and in situations where the consequences of different choice alternatives are uncertain. The team has conducted novel experiments studying what people view as a morally relevant choice. The project is the first to study, using experimental methods, the extent to which people prefer a Bismarckian or a Beveridgean welfare state. The project also has conducted an innovative field experiment on tax compliance in collaboration with the Norwegian Tax Administration, where the team document that moral appeals can have a large effect on tax compliance. The consortium also conducted the first cross-national comparisons of social preferences in which nationally representative samples make real distributive choices, where we document large differences in the prevalence of fairness views in different societies. The researchers conduct the first study to elicit incentivized beliefs about the efficiency costs of taxation, with a large heterogeneous sample from the general population. The project included large-scale experiments that allow us to identify taste-based discrimination against immigrants in a representative sample.
GIWeS Globalisation, Institutions and the Welfare State
Expanding international trade, skill-biased technological developments and the mobility of labor and capital are important elements of recent global change. Investigating how European countries are exposed to these external farces over the last two decades requires a combination of detailed empirica! knowledge and institutional characterizations of firm behaviour, organizations, and welfare state arrangements. The most innovative and original contributions of the project relate to how the various subprojects combine register data, survey data, and information on institutional features to estimate causal impacts of globalization and new technologies. The originality is evident in the research on immigration and welfare arrangements, in the research on globalization and technology & organizational change, in the research on unionization and in the research on the support for different welfare state programs. One particularly important highlight is the research on how being on welfare is transmitted within families one generation after another. The team denotes it the intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency. This research is original and particularly innovative both in the problems raised and the methods and data used.
GlobLabWS: Globalisation, Labour Markets, and the Welfare State
The project highlights the effects of globalisation on the skill-structure of employment. Exporting and/or FDI activities are found to increase firm-level shares of high skilled occupations. The project also bridged the microeconomic/macroeconomic divide characterising the Welfare State (WS) literature by embedding behavioural micro-foundations within general equilibrium frameworks, capturing interactions/feedback effects between a rich menu of WS policies and globalisation in affecting labour markets. Furthermore, the project highlights the importance of labour market participation in shaping the micro/macro/WS interactions of the design of the ‘policy mix’ in determining the effects of WS reforms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, labour market flexibility is not key. Complementarities between Active and Passive Labour Market Policies can trigger virtuous circles of high participation, employment and productivity. The project also shows the role of intra-industry reallocations in determining the effect of international shocks on employment and the effectiveness of WS policies in offsetting them. Inter-country differences in intra-industry heterogeneity affect aggregate employment-to-output elasticities and policy effectiveness. Another highlight is the importance of exploiting policy interactions between policy areas. Industrial policies stimulating industry entry can strengthen the effectiveness of WS policies. Lastly, the project shows the effects of WS policies on the location decision of industries. Higher WS spending is negatively related to the likelihood of firms’ relocating from and positively related to foreign firms locating in a country.
HEALTHDOX: The Paradox of Health State Futures
HEALTHDOX has contributed to the cutting edge of research on welfare state attitudes by bringing causal identification with respect to values into this field. To this end, the team has used natural experiments with coarsened exact matching and panel data to demonstrate the impact of both health policy changes and individual switching between policy regimes on individual evaluative and normative attitudes. The consortium has cooperated with members of other NORFACE WSF projects to use multi-methods triangulation to explore the interpretative meanings that underpin respondents’ answers to survey questions on welfare states (WelfSOC), to explore the relationship between health care institutions and individual justice evaluations (HiNews), and to investigate the welfare state attitudes of migrants (Mifare). The team also contributed to the field of political determinants of welfare state policies and policy responsiveness. Using the expanded political indicators data set, the project shows that competition from radical right parties impedes social investment, and that electoral competition enhances social policy responsiveness, while veto points and corporatism inhibit social policy responsiveness. With regard to the impact of welfare state provision on attitudes, the project finds a U-shaped relationship, such that improved government financing is more highly supported by very insecure and very secure individuals than by those in the middle.
HiNEWS: Health inequalities in European welfare states
A special module examining the social determinants of health inequalities in Europe was included in the European Social Survey (2014). This was designed and analysed by HiNEWS team members, resulting in a special supplement of the European Journal of Public Health. The consortium found considerable cross-national variability in the magnitude and patterning of health inequalities and the effects of health conditions, and also access to health care which was found to vary by socio-economic position. In addition, a new health systems typology was developed and used to analyse the role of health care system types in reducing inequalities in mortality amenable to health care. This concluded that educational differences in amenable mortality for European countries exist in all countries, regardless of their health care system type. However, the study also found important variations in inequalities in amenable mortality between countries, indicating a potential role for healthcare system factors. The HiNEWS team also has developed new institutional approaches to the study of health inequalities in Europe which unpack the role of the welfare state as an institutional arrangement that mediates the effects of socio-economic status and gender on health. Finally, the consortium examined the role of the welfare state in reducing health inequalities through conducting a large evidence review of the role of public health policies. This examined the effects of primary and secondary prevention policies (fiscal, regulation, education, preventative treatment and screening) across seven public health domains (tobacco, alcohol, food and nutrition, reproductive health services, the control of infectious diseases, the environment and workplace regulations). It found that some policy interventions reduced health inequalities (e.g. food subsidy programmes, immunisations), others had no effect whilst some interventions appeared to increase inequalities (e.g. 20 mph and low emission zones).
4Is: Inequalities, Insurance, Incentives and Immigration: Challenges and Solutions for the Welfare State
When evaluating different policy programs, one typically investigate effects on employment, and income. This project illustrates how ex-ante policy evaluation can be performed in terms of richer concepts of individual well-being, such as subjective life satisfaction and equivalent incomes, and that the effect of potential reforms varies widely depending on the well-being concept used in the evaluation. The large inflow of migrants to the EU have raised concerns about the emergence of ethnically segregated neighbourhoods. Using rich geo-coded register data from Sweden, spanning over 20 years, the consortium analysed how an inflow of migrants affect natives moving patterns. An improved so-called “shift-share" approach that combines policy-induced initial immigrant settlements with exogenous contemporaneous immigration as captured by refugee shocks is applied. The project results indicate that preference for ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods may not be the dominant channel inducing flight.
ALMP provide incentives for job search especially among individuals with good labour market prospects, and help individuals with poor labour market prospects. The team tested this dual role of ALMP analyzing a Swedish youth activation programme. The consortium found that individuals with a high predicted probability of finding work respond to the threat of activation, whereas there is no effect for individuals with weak labour market prospects.
MIFARE: Migrants’ Welfare State Attitudes
Results from the project show that migrants have limited knowledge on when, after migration, their migrant group has access to social benefits. Although migrants have a better knowledge about access to health care (right after registration) and unemployment benefits (once migrants have formally worked in the residence country), they have hardly knowledge about entitlements to state pensions or social assistance schemes. This means that migrants could be much better informed about their social rights. Migrants vary strongly in the extent to which they perceive immediate access to welfare after immigration, but among none of the immigrant groups, more than a third perceives immediate access to all welfare domains. Instead, among immigrants groups from the US and Russia, more restricted access to welfare is perceived than factually is. The project also found that migrants from Japan and China prefer less government spending than natives. On the other hand, Spanish and Turkish migrants do prefer more spending. On some domains all migrant groups prefer less spending than natives do, e.g. in the domain of elderly care. The consortium also found that actual arrangements, as compared to country of origin arrangements, also affect people’s attitudes on government spending. For example, the results show large differences on attitudes to child care spending preferences between Dutch natives and migrants. Migrants, in particular those in higher status groups, prefer more government spending on child care in the Netherlands than Dutch native do. The MIFARE study challenges the idea that all immigrants are supportive of extended welfare state arrangements.
MobileWelfare: European Welfare Systems in Times of Mobility
The project makes a range of contributions to the field of which three innovative contributions are highlighted here. First of all the team was able to show that the so far dominant idea of a welfare operating as a general magnet effect is not found in Europe. Both at the macro and micro level, links between migration and welfare are much more complex, depending on life course stage, welfare domain and individual rights. Migrants in general did not have insights into welfare systems and arrangements and their welfare right before migration. This project’s results clearly contest accounts of an welfare magnet effect by revealing the complexity of migration motivations and decisions. A second key finding of the MobileWelfare project is that the experience of welfare is often transnational. After migration resources in both the country of destination and origin are used and onward migration decisions are include considerations of welfare in both origin and destination. As such, the findings challenge the spatial and national limitations often placed upon understandings of welfare practice and experience. The existing literature, largely overlooked the role of welfare regimes in origin countries on migration aspirations, decisions and practices resulting in a ‘receiving country bias’. The project findings point to the importance of welfare regimes and informal family provision in the origin country. This is evidenced through the assemblage of welfare that migrants construct across more than one nation state and with providers from the formal public and private sectors, the informal sector and the family. Third, the consortium was able to achieve a still rather uncommon multi-method approach in the project by combining analyses of secondary quantitative data, collecting primary data by carrying out around 350 qualitative interviews across 7 countries with a comparative interview guide across sides, as well as conducting an experimental factorial survey in three countries. The findings from each of these different methods answered part of the research puzzle but were also complementary in that their key findings all pointed in the same direction.
PORECAN: Policies and responses with regard to child abuse and neglect in England, Germany and the Netherlands: a comparative multi-site study
The innovative character of the project lies in the combination of comparative research on child protection systems at three levels: the policy, the practice and the clients’ (parents’) level. The policy analyses showed that child protection systems were keeping a local flavour, notwithstanding growing convergence between countries through international regulations. Unique in the project was the detailed analysis of case files. This allowed the team to trace step-by-step child maltreatment investigations, from report to decision. The large sample of case files per country and the cross-country comparisons were bringing a deeper understanding of this process, whereas the comparative policy analyses were helping to contextualize findings. Both the framework for the policy analyses and the coding scheme for the case file studies proved to be useful instruments and may help other researchers conduct cross-national comparative research in the field of child protection. Finally, the cross-national comparisons of parents’ views of child maltreatment investigations have been bringing new insights into how child protection systems and their professionals are perceived by clients and how investigations following reports of child maltreatment could be improved to the benefit of parents and children.
TransJudFare: Transnationalization and the judicialization of welfare
As intended, the research efforts of the TransJudFare project have mainly helped to further the empirical knowledge about the actual impact of the domestic effects of EU case law on cross-border welfare and citizenship rights. This has significantly helped to strengthen the understanding of the impact of European integration on national welfare states as well as the importance of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for national policy-making. Specifically, the project’s key findings are: the domestic reactions have been predominantly restrictive (= quarantining and containing ECJ case law), especially by legislatures and administrations, in order to guard national non-contributory benefit schemes from “welfare migration”; the issue of “welfare for EU citizens” became intensely negatively politicized in all five member states under investigation, supporting or even causing the restrictive domestic response pattern; the fiscal impact of EU free movement and extensive non-discrimination is – because of the restrictive member state policies – in most instances positive for the member states; the major costs of the restrictive implementation of EU free movement and non-discrimination rules have to be borne individually by EU citizens.
TRANSWEL: Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe: An Analysis of Portability Regimes of Social Security Rights
The project contributes to the study of intra-EU mobility, welfare and European social citizenship through a comparative examination of regulations, discourses and mobile Europeans’ experiences of cross-border social security and social rights portability (Amelina et al. forthcoming). It offers insights into the selectivity criteria of welfare provision in the four above-mentioned social security areas that lie at the heart of European cross-border social security governance. In addition, it identifies specific discourses of welfare belonging (gendered, ethnicized/racialized, class-related images of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’) that frame institutional selectivity by constructing images of mobile EU-citizens who either do or do not ‘deserve’ social membership. The project also provides a detailed examination of inequalities that mobile EU citizens from the new EU countries experience when trying to access and port social security rights across borders and reveals how these experiences are linked to the institutional selectivity criteria of European cross-border social security governance. The projects’ main outcome is that the institutional requirements of formal employment and long-term residence are the main selectivity criteria of European social security governance that generate the unequal welfare opportunities among mobile EU citizens. These welfare inequalities are framed by powerful discourses of welfare belonging with regard to largely non-desired Eastern European movers from the peripheries of the EU, only the self-sufficient of whom are regarded in a positive light. Most important, mobile EU citizens experience free movement as a vicious cycle of losses of welfare opportunities that result from individual decisions not to claim rights because of the barriers experienced and from perceptions of not being treated the same way as immobile welfare claimants.
UPWEB: Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage
The project has identified, within healthcare providers, a range of bricolage tactics which have been utilised in a bid to address some of the complex challenges they as providers face when working in superdiverse neighbourhoods. The team found that public healthcare systems are often constrained by managerial systems that deny them the flexibility that they need to address complex problems. They frequently work informally with NGOs, who themselves take a leading role, in providing services to individuals with complex problems. NGOs have a good sense of the healthcare ecosystem within superdiverse neighbourhoods and utilise this knowledge to cross-refer individuals i.e. who have immigration or addiction problems which underpin their health concerns. The intricate mix of social and health problems is not only an issue for migrants. The UPWEB project showed how combinations of austerity, poverty, addiction, low levels of education and low incomes shape people’s health concerns and their ability to mobilise resources to address those concerns. Finally, as planned at the outset of the project the consortium introduced a new concept to capture the complexity of healthcare seeking behaviours. The team moved from welfare bricolage to healthcare bricolage (but will in different circumstances use both), which is providing a new, original approach to the problem of integration of social and health care that may well spark debate.
WelfSOC: Welfare State Futures: Our Children’s Europe
This project successfully conducted co-ordinated deliberative forums to investigate attitudes and debate in the area of social policy across five European countries using similar instruments and materials. The project demonstrates that most people continue to support the main welfare state programmes, despite real concerns about cost and different degrees of confidence in their sustainability. The majority of people also endorse social investment programmes to secure better training, childcare and education for the mass of the population, on grounds of fairness in social democratic countries, economic efficiency in more corporatist and individual opportunity in more liberal ones, and regard immigration as a major issue in most countries. The UK stands out in terms of its exclusionary attitudes; elsewhere the topic is understood more in terms of social and cultural integration. The project also shows that most people remain committed to the intergenerational contract, with older people in richer countries being willing to make sacrifices in their own welfare entitlements. Finally, the project demonstrates that most people pay little attention to evidence or the standard procedures of scientific discourse in discussing welfare issues.
Potential Impact:
On a programme level, the WSF Scientific Programme Coordinator Prof. Ellen M. Immergut played a key role in highlighting the impact of the programme and the projects and in organizing dissemination activities for the joint results of the programme. A highly relevant dissemination activity was the WSF Final Conference that took place at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in May 2018. All individual WSF projects gave presentations at the Final Conference, which was attended by various stakeholders and policymakers, including representatives from the WHO and the OECD. In relation to the conference, the Scientific Programme Coordinator held the State of the Union Address on “Welfare State Futures: What Role for Solidarity” at the State of the Union Conference, 10-12 May 2018, at the European University Institute, using this as an opportunity to showcase the research findings of the Welfare State Futures Programme
Chief findings of the WSF programme will also be summarized in an overall scientific document in the form of a Palgrave Macmillan Pivot. Furthermore, a Policy Brief has been produced to disseminate key policy-relevant findings of the programme to stakeholders at the European level, including the European Commission. Other dissemination products include the WSF newsletter series, a multi-media animation with a focus on impact, a WSF Wikipedia site, and an article in the March 2018 issue of “EU Research” magazine. The Scientific Programme Coordinator also encouraged to highlight the importance of dissemination to the individual WSF projects, whose dissemination activities can be found below.
EXCEL: Exploring Comparative Effectiveness and efficiency in Long-term care
The results of this project will have an impact on how long-term care (LTC) services are organised and delivered in the future. First, the project has provided validated outcome tools that can be used by researchers and directly by LTC practitioners. Previous experience in England is that LTC professionals can use outcome indicators in managing the delivery of care services. Currently, there are no LTC related quality of life measures available in Finland. Availability of the translated and validated ASCOT instruments and the preference weights will fill this gap. Some use of the translated measure has already been realized in research and social care practice during the year 2018. It is expected that the use of the translated measures will expand in future once the EXCELC research findings on validation of the translated measures and Finnish preference weights have been published and disseminated. One important future societal impact of the EXCELC project in Finland will hence be the better access to a translated and validated LTC related quality of life measure.
ASCOT has also gained interest in Austria: one of the main care organisations have implemented ASCOT as an evaluation toolkit for their care managers (‘Pflegedienstleitungen’). An ongoing project of the Gesundheit Österreich (National Institute for Health) has social-care-related quality of life using ASCOT shortlisted as a recommended evaluation toolkit. Second, the project has impact through its analysis of service user and carer data collected in the project. The consortium is producing evidence about the effects of LTC in our partner countries, which will result in a range of papers.
The consortium has reached policy makers via the International Long-term care Policy Network (ILPN). In particular, the team presented recently at the 2018 meeting. ILPN is network of researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders that aims to promote the global exchange of evidence and knowledge on LTC policy. To reach both practitioner/professional and the wider academic community, the consortium used a combination of newsletters, blogs etc. As an example, to reach these audiences in Finland, the team has written four short newsletters in the THL OPTIMI newsletter about the research. The newsletter is published four times a year and it is widely circulated among researchers, decision-makers and practitioners of health and social care in Finland. In Austria, a series of presentations were held to inform long-term care organisations and national organisations about measuring outcomes of long-term care using ASCOT.
FACSK: Family complexity and social work. A comparative study of family-based welfare work in different welfare regimes
Various end-users, ranging from policy-makers to social workers, will gain new knowledge about different conceptions of the family and services provided from this project. Social policies have, with different degrees in European and Latin American countries, integrated specific cultural roots in which the family has the role to face social problems. The project addresses the improvement of competences for students and people working with interventions for vulnerable children and marginalised families. It follows the Europe 2020 (New skills for new jobs) and Lisbon Treaty goals of providing professionals with improved competencies to match the need of the labour market and to promote social cohesion and inclusion.
FACSK has been very active in disseminating research in the research community both in Europe and in Latin America, with over twenty presentations at international conferences. Through communicating research findings to social workers, managers and local politicians (social services), the research can have an impact on social work education in many countries, particularly family social work and working with families from different cultures. The research has received interest from policy makers in, among others, the UK, Norway and Sweden. Knowledge from the project may contribute to reformed social legislation, in particular the role of families can be addressed in a reformed way. The project organized activities such as conferences addressing several target groups simultaneously and local arrangements for communication with specific target groups.
FPRWS: Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state
The research project has provided new knowledge about how welfare states can meet new challenges.
In particular, it has provided a better understanding of what people view as fair and unfair inequalities. This insight is essential to ensure that concerns for personal responsibility can be integrated in the design of welfare schemes in a way that is perceived as fair. An important example of the direct impact of the research is provided by the field experiment conducted with the Norwegian Tax Administration. This experiment documented that a moral appeal could increase tax compliance and the letters to tax payers used in the experiment is currently used by the tax administration. Another example is the result that Dutch natives value the investment in a non-Western immigrant less than that of another Dutch native has societal impact. The result implies that at least some of the discrimination of non-Western immigrants often observed, for example in housing markets or job markets, is due to tastes of landlords or employers: some of them simply dislike immigrants. The policy prescription for policy makers who wish to reduce discrimination is different than if the discrimination would be only due to stereotypes. Stereotypes (although sometimes hardwired) can be corrected for by information provision but tastes are more difficult to change.
The result that agreement on redistribution policies is more difficult to find under uncertainty can impact
the design and communication of welfare policies. In particular, policies that make a clear link between
costs and benefits are more likely to obtain the endorsement of a large part of the population compared
to policies that entail uncertain elements. Moreover, policies that are characterized by high-risk highreturns are less likely to be supported by the majority compared to policies with the same expected
returns but lower risks.
The consortium has interacted directly with policy makers and given talks to numerous public agencies. The team also cooperated directly with the Norwegian Tax Administration. Furthermore, the results have been communicated to a general audience in the form of policy articles at Vox, public lectures and newspaper columns. The team also used social media actively and has built a large following on twitter and Facebook, which are now part of the media platform of the new research centre FAIR.
GIWeS Globalisation, Institutions and the Welfare State
This project provided new knowledge about how the welfare states can meet current challenges and how concerns for personal responsibility can be integrated in the design of welfare schemes in a way that is perceived as fair. A better understanding of the relation between globalization, inequality, and the welfare state is highly pertinent, because it will increase the knowledge base on which decisions are made. Furthermore, the project has significant impact because views on these linkages shape public debate and perceptions about policy options. The findings of the project have been aimed at the research community, policy makers, and the general public. Papers have been discussed at various meetings and seminars within the research community, and the results have been widely disseminated toward both policy-makers, the media, as well as the general public, for example by writing shorter pieces for newspapers and other outlets. In Norway, a series of articles have been published in the main business newspaper of the country.
In addition, the members of the consortium are active participants in the public debate and undertake large dissemination efforts to reach wide audiences. As such, they have been active in giving popular seminars for audiences in the public and private sector, for political parties and for interest organizations. In Norway, project participants have given at least ten of such presentations each year, including presentations at the Ministry of Trade, Trade Union Conferences, the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority and the Nordic Council.
GlobLabWS: Globalisation, Labour Markets, and the Welfare State
Globalization and welfare state issues are receiving a large and growing interest across Europe. The project’s findings contribute to economic and social policies by providing theoretical and empirical analyses of some of the issues being discussed. The results of this project are central to current socio-economic debates on the effectiveness and sustainability of welfare state institutions and provide policymakers with a deeper understanding of the key trade-offs entailed by different policy scenarios. Throughout the project, the consortium has aimed at reaching both the academic community and policy makers. The first group has been targeted mainly through academic publications/discussion papers and conference/workshop presentations.
The second group has been reached through participation in policy-oriented conferences and media interviews. Examples include interviews with various Swedish newspapers and magazines and with ZDF Television, and presentations at the OECD Global Forum on International Investment and the Forum on Globalization and Industrialization. The GlobLabWS final workshop, held in Aberdeen in August 2018, also involved participants from the OECD and Scottish Government. Furthermore, following a presentation to the Scottish Parliament, Lead Principal Investigator Catia Montagna was invited to become a (founding) member of the Expert Network on Social Security, Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe).
HEALTHDOX: The Paradox of Health State Futures
This research provides important insights for health governance and the political sustainability of health systems, as well as for the ability of European health systems to integrate newcomers to Europe and to the European Union. Understanding the impact of health systems on population health and population attitudes is of clear societal relevance. In addition to the scientific community, which has been addressed through refereed journal articles, participation in major international conferences, and the project’s forthcoming book, the consortium aimed to reach health policymakers and stakeholders. To this end, the team has assembled a stakeholders’ data set (75 contacts), distributed across the fields of: Experts (researchers working at universities, research institutes/centers, institutes for public health, international organizations, think-tanks, 68%), Government Officials (Ministers of Health, people working in ministries of health, 10%), Professionals (doctors, nurses, members of professional associations and trade unions, 12%), Politicians (7%), Media (journalists, 3%).
To name one example, the team has been in contact with the German Ministry of Health throughout the duration of the project, and will continue to maintain contact. The consortium also invited such stakeholders to the project meetings, although there was a somewhat low attendance, not because of lack of interest but owing to other pressing duties. Therefore, the main outreach activities will take place when the Handbook is published, in the form of a book launch and events in the project’s individual countries. The project’s main user group comprises the members of the research departments of the National Health Ministries. These and other stakeholders have already expressed very active interest in the project’s Health Handbook, and the consortium will build on this with follow-up mailings and meetings, such as presentations in the ministries by the authors. For example, the Latvian author will be presenting his chapter in a series of public events organized by his university. In addition, a follow-up article on Innovation in Health Governance for the Hertie School of Government Handbook in Health Governance (Oxford University Press) that includes “best practices” is planned for March 2019.
HiNEWS: Health inequalities in European welfare states
HiNews has highlighted the extent of health inequalities across Europe, and has offered tentative solutions which may be pursued by policy makers to reduce differences in health between groups of people. In terms of outputs, around 50 peer-reviewed publications have been published from the HiNews research and the findings have been picked up by national press. In addition, the HiNews team has worked collaboratively with a range of partners, including Eurohealthnet, to disseminate the results to policy makers and practitioners across the European Union member states – raising awareness of the extent of inequalities in European countries and the policies which may be used to reduce the differences in health amongst different socioeconomic groups.
Dissemination activities include presentations for policymakers and civil society and policy seminars at e.g. EC Health and WHO events. Lead Principal Investigator Clare Bambra has been appointed to the WHO Europe Scientific Advisory Group on health equity and as a result will be supporting the development of WHO policy in this area. Furthermore, the results of the project’s Work Package C on ‘The welfare state, healthcare systems, and social inequalities in mortality’ will be included as part of an Oxford University Press book on healthcare systems which is currently under review. Promotional activities around this book will ensure that the research results are promoted after the funding period.
4Is: Inequalities, Insurance, Incentives and Immigration: Challenges and Solutions for the Welfare State
The findings of the project are a crucial input to governments’ decisions on how to finance the welfare system and redistribute income while maintaining incentives to work and avoiding poverty traps. The conducted work, especially in Strands 1 and 2 on ‘Inequality, well-being and the welfare state’ and ‘Preferences for the welfare state’, will be important input to policy makers designing tax- and benefit systems. The project’s research results from Strand 3, on ‘The costs and effects of tax incentives’, will speak to the evaluation of the longer term impacts of taxes on the economy.
The research is aimed at both the research community and policy makers. To reach the first group, the team members have presented their work at many international conferences and as invited speakers to universities and research institutes. Also, various papers will eventually be submitted to international scientific journals. The second group has been targeted with policy reports, team members being invited to different governmental offices etc., and interviews of team members in the national media. For example, the Finnish team presented at a public policy event of the VATT Institute for Economic Research, on ‘Incentives and Inequality: A Microsimulation Approach’. A publication on ‘Native Migration Responses to Increased Immigration’ was also published in the ifo DICE Report, an English-language journal featuring articles on institutional regulations and economic policy measures that offer country comparative analyses.
MIFARE: Migrants’ Welfare State Attitudes
The project highlights the relevance of knowledge among immigrants about the eligibility. The project found that migrants are often not aware of when after arrival they have access to welfare state provisions. In particular knowledge about the access to pensions and social assistance are found to be problematic. Migrants are well aware of the access to health care and unemployment.
Migrants also vary, just like the native population, in the extent they support more government spending on welfare. On certain domains, migrants are stronger opponents to larger government investments to welfare than natives. The project contributes to nuancing how migrants relate to the welfare state and shows clearly the diversity among migrants in their support for welfare state arrangements. Moreover, some immigrants also propose a more restricted access for immigrants in general. Migrants perceive some of the welfare arrangements as problematic, like child care support in the Netherlands. There, migrants support a much stronger investment from the government than natives do.
The data from the project have been archived for the scientific community and since Fall 2017, various publications have been generated. Based on these publications, the consortium has been informing the wider audience. Once a publication is realized, a popular version has been sent to relevant websites (e.g. socialevraagstukken.nl in the Netherlands). Policymakers have expressed serious interest in the project’s findings. The project has been used for government advisement in Denmark, where policymakers and advisors asked for a professional publication. In the Netherlands, findings are shared with representatives from the Dutch Institute for Social Research that informs the Ministries and the UWV, which is the Dutch organisation that deals with labour market insurances. In September 2018, a policy brief was conducted in The Hague, to inform policymakers about the findings from the project (together with the MobileWelfare project).
The findings of the project are also shared in blogs, social media and the traditional media. They also form the basis for the policy brief and professional publications still planned by the consortium. In Demark, the MIFARE findings are used to discuss assumptions behind the Danish government plan to combat what is labelled “Parallel societies” (Initiative launched by the government in February 2018).
MobileWelfare: European Welfare Systems in Times of Mobility
Migration and welfare are high on the societal and political agenda. Debates are sometimes guided by specific perceptions, where this study can provide the facts. Communication of the main findings in that sense may help to de-myth certain expectations or assumptions and fuel a fact based discussion on the issues at stake. The relevant users of the project findings include academics, policy makers, civil society organisations working on migrant and/or welfare issues, and practitioners working both on migration/integration issues and in the broader social welfare arena including advisors providing information and/or support on welfare or migration issues to mobile Europeans.
Findings have been presented to the scientific community via international publications and presentations. The results have been presented to policy makers via presentations and easy accessible short publications. Policy makers at the national level have been interested in the project and team members have been invited for presentations and participation in exchanges with the policy field. These include presentations at a conference organized by the National Bank of Poland and the Polish Social Insurance Institution, a MICARD conference and the IMISCOE annual conference. In addition, a final policy briefing for Dutch policymakers took place in The Hague at the end of 2018.
PORECAN: Policies and responses with regard to child abuse and neglect in England, Germany and the Netherlands: a comparative multi-site study
The comparative policy analyses may have societal impact on policy makers from different countries, since these analyses help them to understand better the child protection system in their own country. Policy makers may learn from these analyses about the strengths and the limits of the system in their own country and how their system may be improved to the benefit of children and families. The case file study may have impact on professionals, who are involved in child maltreatment investigations. The study shows how these investigations are put into practice and how they are documented in each of the countries and makes clear how professionals actually work and what happens with reports. The case file study also shows which types of maltreatment are reported and which are not or underreported (compared to other countries). This may help professionals to gain more insight in their work and may also open debate on how to improve the investigations. The reflections on what is reported may also make professionals aware of the categories and definitions of child maltreatment that are used in their country and how these may guide reports and investigations. The interview study on parents’ views of the investigation has an added value both for policy makers in the field of child protection and professionals in the services. It is one of the few studies on parents’ voices on child maltreatment investigations. As for the policy analysis and the case file study, results of the interviews with parents may help to improve child protection systems in the different countries and make them more ‘child-friendly’.
In the first year, the project’s dissemination activities were mainly aimed at announcing the project to other researchers, to expand the group of stakeholders and to explain the project to the scientific community and practice field. Moreover, activities were aimed to inform stakeholders and local and international scientific community about the progress and the results. From the second year on, dissemination activities were focused on the findings of the three studies per country, the cross-national comparisons and the methods that were used. The team has been active on the project website, social media and via newsletters directed at stakeholders. The team also had at regular times meetings with key stakeholders to make them aware of the project, recruit them for the dissemination efforts and inform them about the progress
The results of the policy analyses were presented at EUSARF 2016 international conference on child welfare and the policy briefings of Germany, the Netherlands and England were published on our website. The results of the case file study and the study on parents’ views were presented during the project Summer School in Groningen, at the European ISPCAN conference on child abuse and neglect in The Hague, at the symposium of the International Decision-Making Network in Basel, at the International Colloquium on Child Protection in Latin America and Europe in Mexico, and at the EUSARF 2018 international conference on child welfare in Porto. In addition, all national teams organized local meetings for the representatives and the professionals of the sites that participated in the case file and the interview study. Furthermore, the UK team was awarded additional funding for dissemination and impact-building activities by their national research council. The grant was used to fund dissemination activities in the four participating local authorities, the production of briefings on the study for wider dissemination across the UK and, a pilot study of children’s perceptions of the child protection process, which involve consultation with groups of children in care and interviews with individual children.
TransJudFare: Transnationalization and the judicialization of welfare
At least five of the core findings of the TransJudFare project are highly relevant for current public debates about free movement in the European Union, potentially influencing these discussions effectively: 1) the EU Member states are able to employ different strategies to guard their welfare institutions from non-working EU citizens on the move; 2) especially, the universal, Nordic welfare state fares well under non-discrimination and free movement, because of its regulated labour market; 3) under extreme conditions, however, free movement can undermine national welfare state arrangements; 4) the major costs of the restrictive implementation of EU free movement and non-discrimination rules have to be borne individually by EU citizens; 5) the European Court of Justice seems to be responsive to the recent politicization of free movement and welfare rights for mobile EU citizens.
As intended, the research efforts of the TransJudFare project have significantly helped to strengthen the understanding of the impact of European integration on national welfare states as well as the importance of the European Court of Justice for national policy-making. The consortium held various presentations for policy makers, including at the Danish Ministry for Employment, the Danish Parliament, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the European Policy Centre. Furthermore, the team published in several media outlets, including television, newspapers, and magazines.
TRANSWEL: Mobile Welfare in a Transnational Europe: An Analysis of Portability Regimes of Social Security Rights
The project results provide insights into the strategies mobile Europeans use to deal with cumulative disadvantages and reveals how these disadvantages are incorporated into migrants’ multi-local life worlds. In doing so, the consortium could see the direct implications of the tension between legal freedom of movement and de facto discrimination for mobile EU citizens on the ground. These findings are of high relevance both for policy makers as well as for concerned mobile EU citizens.
The results of the research are aimed at the scientific community, policy makers and interested members of NGOs and civil society. To this end, the consortium presented the results at academic conferences as well as at venues open to the interested non-academic public. The team further aimed at publishing both in peer-reviewed journals and media addressing a more general public. Dissemination activities included acting as expert in television programmes and radio interviews, expert presentations at e.g. the European Parliament and the Platform for European NGOs working on Family (coFAM), the publication of policy briefs, and presentations at conferences such as ESPAnet Austria, IMISCOE and the Nordic Council Annual Meeting.
UPWEB: Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage
The findings of this project have described the complexity of healthcare seeking in neighbourhoods characterised by migration-driven diversity. The evidence from the project has been very timely in filling in the picture of the strategies and tactics adopted by neighbourhood populations made up of new arrivals, longer standing and resident populations and how these needs are met by providers. Our findings have made visible unofficial work undertaken by patients and professionals that is not accounted for. This is important in understanding the particular demands and opportunities that diverse neighbourhoods represent.
The consortium has sought to have immediate, short-term impact by speaking with policy makers and politicians from local to national level, as well as seeking to write up the results in journal articles and book chapters for longer-term impact. The project has produced different materials for different audiences, for example policy briefing papers for policymakers and working papers for specialised audiences. The team participated in workshops at the national and European levels, informing policy makers on healthcare for asylum seekers and refugees. This took place at the European level, at a workshop for MEPs on women’s healthcare needs and at a Turkish high-level workshop for civil servants, as well as at local level, at stakeholders’ meetings and discussions with politicians and citizen associations.
The project’s Lead Principal Investigator Jenny Phillimore was also invited to contribute to the Best Brains Exchange to outline some of the challenges and opportunities around providing healthcare for diverse communities. Furthermore, the project’s final event was attended by major international NGOs and the World health Organisation.
WelfSOC: Welfare State Futures: Our Children’s Europe
The main project results are relevant to those involved in practical policy in relation to 1) how consultations are carried out and how policy ideas and choices are communicated; 2) social investment is an idea whose time has come. It can be promoted in a number of ways with different aspects of greater interest to specific groups; 3) the intergenerational contract may have the potential for revision in richer societies where there are currently pressures on public spending and provision in pensions and other services is very good; 4) immigration is a key issue and, in some countries, demands greater efforts to achieve integration; and 5) poverty is not an issue which people immediately identify as requiring welfare interventions in the future, except in Slovenia.
The project addressed academic communities, primarily in Europe, through the publication of articles in high quality journals, special issues, academic books, presentation of papers at academic conferences and engagement with professional associations. Policy-making and civil service communities at national and international level have been addressed through targeted presentations, e.g. at the House of Commons. Furthermore, wider non-academic communities have been addressed through engagement with the media and through blogs, including at the project website, the Guardian, and the Social Policy Association.
List of Websites:
WSF website: https://welfarestatefutures.org/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)
NORFACE website: https://www.norface.net/program/wsf/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)
Contact details:
Anne Cukier, NORFACE Coordination Office
Social Sciences and Humanities Domain
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
Laan van Nieuw Oost-Indië 300
2593 CE The Hague, the Netherlands
Tel: +31 703440503.
E-mail: a.cukier@nwo.nl