Periodic Reporting for period 3 - WellSIRe (Wellbeing Returns on Social Investment Recalibration)
Período documentado: 2023-09-01 hasta 2025-02-28
European welfare states have experienced a groundswell of reform over the past decades, in response to intensified global competition, deepening European integration, post-industrial family change and accelerating population ageing. Since the new millennium, the notion of social investment (SI) gained purchase as a policy compass to address structural challenges in an integrated fashion. The objective of social investment-oriented policies is to enhance people’s opportunities and capabilities to resolve social risks typical of post-industrial economies ex-ante, while ensuring the high levels of (quality) employment necessary to sustain the ‘carrying capacity’ also of the popular income protection schemes. SI policies include care, vocational training, active labour market policies, , and lifelong learning. To the extent that SI welfare provision is geared towards maximizing employability, productivity, and work-life balance, this ipso facto bolsters the fiscal sustainability of the modern welfare state without trampling its commitment to poverty alleviation.
The WellSIre project builds on conceptual heuristic of SI policy around three welfare functions: (1) fostering life-long human capital “stock” development; (2) easing the “flow” of family life-course and labour market transitions; and (3) upholding inclusive social protection “buffers” in times of need. The background working hypothesis of the project is that when social protection “buffers”, work-life balanced “flows” and lifelong human “stocks” operate in sync they reap synergetic wellbeing returns, following the logic of a social investment ‘life-course multiplier’ mechanism, generating a cycle of positive well-being returns, in terms of employment, gender equity, with positive results on intra- and intergenerational poverty mitigation. The overall aim of the project is to explain the macro- and micro-level effectiveness of SI policy provision and to explicate the legitimacy and feasibility of SI reform from the perspective of institutional analysis.
The WellSIre project builds on conceptual heuristic of SI policy around three welfare functions: (1) fostering life-long human capital “stock” development; (2) easing the “flow” of family life-course and labour market transitions; and (3) upholding inclusive social protection “buffers” in times of need. The background working hypothesis of the project is that when social protection “buffers”, work-life balanced “flows” and lifelong human “stocks” operate in sync they reap synergetic wellbeing returns, following the logic of a social investment ‘life-course multiplier’ mechanism, generating a cycle of positive well-being returns, in terms of employment, gender equity, with positive results on intra- and intergenerational poverty mitigation. The overall aim of the project is to explain the macro- and micro-level effectiveness of SI policy provision and to explicate the legitimacy and feasibility of SI reform from the perspective of institutional analysis.
The WellSIre research project studies SI provision in two parts across five layers. Part I, concerned with SI policy returns, studies macroeconomic returns at the country level (layer 1); micro-level (material) returns at the individual level with respect to employment and poverty (layer 2); and micro-level returns with respect to subjective wellbeing across critical life-course transitions (layer 3). Part II, concerned with the political drivers and institutional mechanisms behind SI reform and delivery, traces national-level social stock, flow, and buffer reform pathways (layer 4), and subnational capacitating services delivery.
Until now, research has focused on the first four layers by a team of four post-docs and three doctoral researchers. Two postdocs, one doctoral researcher, together with the PI, have worked on layers 1, 2, and 3, using large datasets (Eurostat, OECD, EU-SILC, Eurofound, ESS, and country-specific data). The two other post-docs and two doctoral researchers, with the PI, have worked on layer 4. Results have been published in various articles and book-publications.
Work on layers 1, 2, and 3 reveals positive material and subjective wellbeing returns on social investment at the micro-level. Findings show reinforcing employment promoting effects between education and activating policy, together with a positive influence in individual poverty mitigation across one’s life course. In terms of subjective wellbeing, we show that higher life satisfaction is achieved in countries with SI family and lifelong learning policies.
On layer 4, the project identifies political drivers and institutional conditions, and particular reform sequences in the diffusion of SI policy across ten countries coming from different welfare regime legacies. We observe relatively coherent trend of increasing spending on capacitating services in combination with social protection cost-containment, without undermining inclusive income protection.
Alongside research, the team has attended conferences, published in media outlets, and organized a bi-weekly Social Investment Working Group (SIWG) seminar series with invited speakers. Publications for layer 1, 2, and 3, articles and book chapters. The Layer 4 publication of comparative qualitative analysis of SI reform pathways will be a book with a major university press, for which the country authors have already been selected. First drafts were presented at a workshop in September 2022. The final draft chapter workshop is planned in June 2023.
Until now, research has focused on the first four layers by a team of four post-docs and three doctoral researchers. Two postdocs, one doctoral researcher, together with the PI, have worked on layers 1, 2, and 3, using large datasets (Eurostat, OECD, EU-SILC, Eurofound, ESS, and country-specific data). The two other post-docs and two doctoral researchers, with the PI, have worked on layer 4. Results have been published in various articles and book-publications.
Work on layers 1, 2, and 3 reveals positive material and subjective wellbeing returns on social investment at the micro-level. Findings show reinforcing employment promoting effects between education and activating policy, together with a positive influence in individual poverty mitigation across one’s life course. In terms of subjective wellbeing, we show that higher life satisfaction is achieved in countries with SI family and lifelong learning policies.
On layer 4, the project identifies political drivers and institutional conditions, and particular reform sequences in the diffusion of SI policy across ten countries coming from different welfare regime legacies. We observe relatively coherent trend of increasing spending on capacitating services in combination with social protection cost-containment, without undermining inclusive income protection.
Alongside research, the team has attended conferences, published in media outlets, and organized a bi-weekly Social Investment Working Group (SIWG) seminar series with invited speakers. Publications for layer 1, 2, and 3, articles and book chapters. The Layer 4 publication of comparative qualitative analysis of SI reform pathways will be a book with a major university press, for which the country authors have already been selected. First drafts were presented at a workshop in September 2022. The final draft chapter workshop is planned in June 2023.
At first, it was decided to concentrate on the first four country-comparative layers of the project, as the ERC enforced a major cut in the budget. Thanks to EUI-funding, two layers of research were added to the project. Layer 5 on capacitating service delivery and governance thus resurfaced, with findings planned to be published in a major academic edited volume publication. A second initiative has been to devote more research on the agenda-setting role of the European Union (EU), especially with respect to SI reform after the pandemic, facilitated by the NextGenerationEU (NGEU) initiative.
Beyond the state-of-the-art, for Layer 2 we have been able to tease out how policy complementarities at a micro and macro level are related, with ALMP and ECEC efforts reinforcing each other’s effectiveness at promoting individuals’ employment chances. Beyond Layer 4 national SI pathways, we find that more recent SI reforms are positively incentivized by the performance-based financing instruments of the new NGEU Recovery Fund.
An unexpected honour has been the participation of the PI as a member of the EU High-Level Working Group on the Future of Social Protection and the Welfare State in Europe in 2022 and 2023. One of the key concepts of the WellSIRe project – the social investment life-course multiplier – features prominently in the HLG report that was launched in Brussels in February 2023. The report inspired a similar venture on the future of EU Cohesion Policy to call on the PI to counsel the EU on regional cohesion from the perspective of subnational SI delivery and governance.
For the next two years, more articles will appear in leading journals. A major book publication is forthcoming with Oxford University Press (OUP) in the fall entitled Who’s Afraid of the Welfare State Now?, co-authored with Manos Matsaganis from the Polytechnic of Milano, with contributions of two of the WellSIRe postdocs. A separate volume is foreseen on layer 4, with a working title Governing the Welfare Commons in Turbulent Times. Hopefully, layer 5 will be fully rehabilitated with a second edited volume on Laboratories of Social Investment. The PI is planning to conclude the research project with a single-authored monograph, entitled simply Wellbeing Returns on Social Investment, by the very end of the project.
Given that the PI is supervising 20 Phd-researchers at EUI, many of whom are working on welfare related questions, the SIWG has matured into a true laboratory of social investment ideas, theories, and methods, with immense positive spillover effect for the overall project and supervisees’ dissertation projects.
Beyond the state-of-the-art, for Layer 2 we have been able to tease out how policy complementarities at a micro and macro level are related, with ALMP and ECEC efforts reinforcing each other’s effectiveness at promoting individuals’ employment chances. Beyond Layer 4 national SI pathways, we find that more recent SI reforms are positively incentivized by the performance-based financing instruments of the new NGEU Recovery Fund.
An unexpected honour has been the participation of the PI as a member of the EU High-Level Working Group on the Future of Social Protection and the Welfare State in Europe in 2022 and 2023. One of the key concepts of the WellSIRe project – the social investment life-course multiplier – features prominently in the HLG report that was launched in Brussels in February 2023. The report inspired a similar venture on the future of EU Cohesion Policy to call on the PI to counsel the EU on regional cohesion from the perspective of subnational SI delivery and governance.
For the next two years, more articles will appear in leading journals. A major book publication is forthcoming with Oxford University Press (OUP) in the fall entitled Who’s Afraid of the Welfare State Now?, co-authored with Manos Matsaganis from the Polytechnic of Milano, with contributions of two of the WellSIRe postdocs. A separate volume is foreseen on layer 4, with a working title Governing the Welfare Commons in Turbulent Times. Hopefully, layer 5 will be fully rehabilitated with a second edited volume on Laboratories of Social Investment. The PI is planning to conclude the research project with a single-authored monograph, entitled simply Wellbeing Returns on Social Investment, by the very end of the project.
Given that the PI is supervising 20 Phd-researchers at EUI, many of whom are working on welfare related questions, the SIWG has matured into a true laboratory of social investment ideas, theories, and methods, with immense positive spillover effect for the overall project and supervisees’ dissertation projects.