Category: Welfare state outcomes

Being unemployed in the US after the Obama presidency

Obama was elected in 2008 during the height of the crisis with much expectations that he would improve the conditions of the least well-off in American society. As his term nears its end, I use the latest OECD data to assess how unemployed individuals fare now compared to both other developed countries and to when he started his term.

In a nutshell, I show that in all plausible scenarios, individuals in the initial phase of unemployment are worse off in the US than in a median OECD or EU country and their relative situation has gotten worse since 2007, especially if they are in the middle class.

OECD data

The OECD has data on the net replacement rates for six family types in the initial phase of unemployment. The latest data available is 2014 so it is in principle plausible – though unlikely – that the situation has improved massively in the last two years and that this is not captured by my data. Note further the emphasis on the initial phase of unemployment: after a certain time in unemployment – which varies by country – unemployed lose eligibility to certain benefits (or experience falls in the replacement rate).

The OECD tax-benefit Model allows you to specify the marital situation of the family (single, one earner married couple, and two earners married couple) and whether they have children (in this case no children versus two children) for different levels of the average wage.

For simplicity I show the replacement rate for a case when the family does not qualify for cash housing assistance or social assistance in either the in-work or out-of-work situation. I also do not consider the case of earners with 150% of average wage.

The situation in 2014

Figure 1 shows the difference between the US and the EU/OECD average replacement rates in 2014. As an example consider the case of a single person with no children earning 67% of the average wage prior to becoming unemployed. In the US, the person would get 61% out of work income as a percentage of previous earnings equal to 67% of the average wage. The equivalent OECD median is 65% while the EU median is 68% so the gap between the US and the OECD median is 4 percentage points while it is 7 percentage points between the US and the EU.

Comparing different family and income situations reveals that the US is least generous compared to the OECD and EU median for ‘middle class’ (100% of average wages) families that are composed of lone parents with 2 children. The next biggest gap between the US and the OECD/EU median is for low income families with either one earner couple or a lone parent.

By contrast, low income families (67% of average wage) with two earners with or without two children would fare almost exactly the same in terms of replacement rate in the median OECD and EU country as in the US.

Figure 1: The difference between the US and the EU/OECD average replacement rates in 2014

EU US gap in 2014

Cross-national variation

In Figure 2, I show the 2014 cross-national variation in the replacement rate for a single earner with no children that does not qualify for cash housing assistance or social assistance and had previous earnings of 67% of average wage. This reveals that the US is not the worse country among developed countries (the worse is not surprisingly the UK – though note that the situation does not quite look as dire for the UK if the family qualifies for cash housing assistance). But it is located in the bottom half of the ranking.

Figure 2: 2014 replacement rate for a single earner with no children that does not qualify for cash housing assistance or social assistance and had previous earnings of 67% AW

Figure 3

Changes since 2007

In 2014, the average across all family types and both income situations for the US is 59% compared to 70% for the OECD median and 71% for the EU median. This represents a fall from 2007 where the average was 62% for the US, 60% for the OECD and 71% for the EU median.

Figure 3 shows how the gap between the US and the EU has evolved between 2007 and 2014 for different family-income scenarios. Positive values indicate that there has been an increase in the gap between what a person would get in a median EU country and what they would get in the US. Thus for instance, we see that the biggest increases in the gap has been for one  earner married couple with no children that earned 100% of the average wage prior to becoming unemployed and a single person with no children also earning 100% of the average wage prior to becoming unemployed. The next biggest increase has occurred for a lone parent with two children.

Thus, over the Obama presidency, the welfare of vulnerable middle class families in the US relative to their counterpart in the Europe has gotten worse. This is a striking result given the significant retrenchment of European welfare states that has taken place in Europe between 2008 and 2014 (the period under consideration here).

Figure 3: The difference between the EU-US gap in 2007 and in 2014

Change between 2014 and 2007.jpgDisappointing but not surprising

While disappointing, the falling welfare of the unemployed in the US is not entirely surprising from a theoretical perspective. The welfare state literature makes clear that liberal welfare regimes’ structure (e.g. targeted means tested benefits) limit the popular support for generous welfare state benefits for the unemployed that are seen as particularly undeserving.

As Rehm brillantly discusses in his latest book “Risk inequality and Welfare state“, countries with concentrated risks of unemployment among low income workers are less likely to exhibit pro-welfare state cross-class coalitions. At the same time, the US type of capitalism limits the power of the unions while making it unlikely that employers will consent – in the words of Korpi – to more generous social policies (see Varieties of Capitalism literature).

As a result, where there is no clear efficiency imperative (e.g. Obamacare in the context of objective inefficiencies in the health care sector in the US), it is therefore difficult even for a left leaning government to undertake an expansion of welfare state policies.

New Journal of European Social Policy Issue

This recent issue covers the introduction of patient choice in Sweden. Two articles discuss the effect of macroeconomic conditions and pre-existing welfare state institutions on demands for redistribution and preferences for welfare state policies, respectively. The effect of credit markets on homelessness and the temporarily of poverty are also investigated. Last but not least, the article by Marx and Picot looks at the preferences of precarious workers as compared to those in permanent employment, while Schmitt, C. and H. Obinger investigate the process of policy diffusion and interpendence for three welfare state policies.

Fredriksson, M., P. Blomqvist, et al. (2013). “The trade-off between choice and equity: Swedish policymakers’ arguments when introducing patient choice.” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2): 192-209.

How do policymakers deal with the tension between choice and equity in healthcare? An analysis and critical examination of Swedish policymakers’ arguments when introducing legislated choice of primary care provider in 2010 shows that even when deciding on a reform with a potentially great impact on distribution of health resources, implications for equity were not systematically addressed. Effects with regards to current patterns of healthcare consumption in the population as well as existing inequalities in health outcomes were not adequately addressed. Neither was the primary are choice reform, which is based on the values of consumerism and individual choice, problematized in relation to current healthcare legislation such as the Health and Medical Services Act. Given that the values of equity and social solidarity have had such a prominent place in Swedish health policy and discourse in past decades, this is a surprising finding. In conclusion, we argue that because inequalities in health constitute one of the main challenges for public health today, the impact of healthcare reforms on equity should receive more attention in policymaking.

Jæger, M. M. (2013). “The effect of macroeconomic and social conditions on the demand for redistribution: A pseudo panel approach.” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2): 149-163.

This paper analyses the effect of macroeconomic and social conditions on the demand for redistribution. Using a synthetic cohort design to generate panel data at the level of socio-demographic groups, analysis of fives waves of data from the European Social Survey (2002–2010) shows that differences across countries in macroeconomic and social conditions have an effect on the demand for redistribution. Consistent with theoretical expectations, economic growth generates a lower demand for redistribution, while higher income inequality generates a higher demand. By contrast, differences across countries in unemployment levels and social expenditure are unrelated to the demand for redistribution. The analysis also suggests that empirical results depend to a considerable extent on the assumptions underlying different methodological approaches.

Jordan, J. (2013). “Policy feedback and support for the welfare state.” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2): 134-148.

How does the structure of social policy institutions shape the level of public support for the welfare state? The policy feedback literature predicts that highly inclusive welfare institutions generate larger bases of public support by shifting the focus away from redistribution and toward common market insecurities felt across classes, while more selective strategies erode support by highlighting the conflicts of interest imbedded in clearly redistributive social programs. This paper expands on existing research by adopting a disaggregated approach to measuring both welfare state structure and public support, uncovering important cross-program variations in public attitudes and welfare state design masked by traditional measures of universality and public support. This project applies this method to public opinion data in 17 advanced capitalist democracies across three policy areas: healthcare, pensions, and unemployment. The findings offer evidence of policy feedback effects.

Lux, M. and M. Mikeszova (2013). “The role of a credit trap on paths to homelessness in the Czech Republic.” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2): 210-223.

This briefing paper aims to show the most common paths to homelessness in a post-socialist state: the Czech Republic. Homelessness in the Czech Republic is worthy of examination because the generous provision of social assistance and tenure security in this country has provided a more secure safety net against homelessness than many other EU member states: yet homelessness has still arisen. The theoretical approach applied in this paper attempts to move beyond the structure–agency debate in the homelessness literature by focusing on the characteristics that most homeless people share on their paths to homelessness. Simple associations among factors associated with homelessness cannot provide a definitive account of the causes of homeless; such data can, however, provide invaluable insights into the constellation of factors that are associated with the phenomenon of homelessness. This briefing paper reveals that the pervasiveness of consumer credit has often been a critical juncture on the pathway to homelessness in the Czech Republic, despite the assistance available from a strong welfare state.

Marx, P. and G. Picot (2013). “The party preferences of atypical workers in Germany.” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2): 164-178.

Are party preferences of atypical workers distinct from those in stable employment? The welfare state literature debates this question, but very few empirical studies have been conducted. We examine the German case, being an example of a welfare state with strong social insurance traditions where the rise of atypical employment has been conspicuous. In particular, we test the argument that preferences of labour market outsiders may not differ because outsiders share households with insiders. We find that labour market status significantly affects party preferences. Compared with standard employees, atypical workers have stronger preferences for small left-wing parties. Living together with a labour market insider neutralizes these party preferences, but this type of household is not very common. Moreover, atypical workers differ from the unemployed by not participating less in elections than insiders. Therefore, it is expedient to distinguish between different types of labour market outsiders.

Schmitt, C. and H. Obinger (2013). “Spatial interdependencies and welfare state generosity in Western democracies, 1960–2000.” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2): 119-133.

For many years comparative welfare state research has been afflicted with a sort of methodological nationalism in the sense that countries were treated as independent units. In line with the recent ‘spatial turn’ in comparative public policy studies, this paper examines with regard to three welfare state programmes whether, in the post-war period, the provision of social rights in 18 Western democracies was shaped by benefit generosity in other countries. We show that diffusion is present but varies by programme and over time. Rather surprisingly, we find that policy diffusion was particularly relevant during the Golden Age.

Snel, E., F. Reelick, et al. (2013). “Time and poverty revisited: A replication of Leisering and Leibfried.” Journal of European Social Policy 23(2): 179-191.

In the late 1990s, the German sociologists Leisering and Leibfried (1999) argued that most poverty is of a temporary nature. In their poverty study in the German city of Bremen, Leisering and Leibfried found that more than half of all social assistance claimants were out of poverty within a year. Based on their work, individualization theorists such as Giddens and Beck argue that ‘for most people poverty is only a temporary experience’. This article replicates Leisering and Leibfried’s study using statistical data about social assistance claiming in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In doing so we find significant numbers of short-term claimants (about 30 percent), as well as surprisingly large numbers of long-term claimants. One in four Rotterdam social assistance claimants is poor for at least 5 years – more than twice as many as Leisering and Leibfried found in their study. We also show that recurrent benefit spells, for Leisering and Leibfried another typical feature of contemporary poverty, is only the exception in Rotterdam. Leisering and Leibfried (and sociologists such as Giddens and Beck in their footsteps) are wrong in claiming that short poverty experiences are typical for poverty in late-modern society. Persistent poverty is still present in our age and in our cities.



New Politics&Society Issue (June 2013)

Special issue on real Utopia

Ackerman, B. (2013). “Reviving Democratic Citizenship?” Politics & Society 41(2): 309-317.

Many of our inherited civic institutions are dead or dying. We need an ambitious reform program to revive democratic life. This essay advances a four-pronged “citizenship agenda”: (1) a campaign finance initiative granting each voter fifty “patriot dollars” to fund candidates and political parties of his or her choice; (2) a proposal for a new national holiday, Deliberation Day, held before each national election, enabling citizens to deliberate on the merits of rival candidates; (3) a system of federally financed electronic news-vouchers to permit professional journalism to survive the destruction of its traditional business model; and (4) a new form of citizenship inheritance, which provides $80,000 to all Americans as they start off life as adults. Working with collaborators, I have developed each of these initiatives at book length. This essay suggests how the “citizenship agenda” yields a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts.

Benkler, Y. (2013). “Practical Anarchism: Peer Mutualism, Market Power, and the Fallible State.” Politics & Society 41(2): 213-251.

The article considers several working anarchies in the networked environment, and whether they offer a model for improving on the persistent imperfections of markets and states. I explore whether these efforts of peer mutualism in fact offer a sufficient range of capabilities to present a meaningful degree of freedom to those who rely on the capabilities it affords, and whether these practices in fact remain sufficiently nonhierarchical to offer a meaningful space of noncoercive interactions. The real utopias I observe here are perfect on neither dimension. Internally, hierarchy and power reappear, to some extent and in some projects, although they are quite different than the hierarchy of government or corporate organization. Externally, there are some spectacular successes, some failures to thrive, and many ambiguous successes. In all, present experience supports neither triumphalism nor defeatism in the utopian project. Peer models do work, and they do provide a degree of freedom in the capabilities they provide. But there is no inexorable path to greater freedom through voluntary open collaboration. There is a good deal of uncertainty and muddling through. The last part of the article suggests a theory of freedom that supports the significance of even these obviously imperfect peer systems with incomplete coverage of necessary human capabilities, and explains why expanding the domain of mutualism improves freedom and well-being under conditions of persistent market imperfection and an inevitably fallible state. Peer mutualism doesn’t have to be perfect; it merely needs to offer a new dimension or sufficient diversity in how it instantiates capabilities and transmits power to offer us, who inhabit the systems that these peer systems perturb, a degree of freedom.
Davis, G. F. (2013). “After the Corporation.” Politics & Society 41(2): 283-308.

Shareholder-owned corporations were the central pillars of the US economy in the twentieth century. Due to the success of the shareholder value movement and the widespread “Nikefication” of production, however, public corporations have become less concentrated, less integrated, less interconnected at the top, shorter-lived, and less prevalent since the turn of the twenty-first century, and there is reason to expect that their significance will continue to dwindle. We are left with both pathologies (heightened inequality, lower mobility, and a fragmented social safety net) and new technologies suitable for being repurposed in more democratic forms. Local solutions for producing, distributing, and sharing can provide functional alternatives to corporations for both production and employment; what is needed is the social organization to match the tools that we already have, or will have shortly. The time for democratic local economic forms prophesied by generations of activists may finally be at hand.
Fung, A. (2013). “Infotopia: Unleashing the Democratic Power of Transparency.” Politics & Society 41(2): 183-212.

In Infotopia, citizens enjoy a wide range of information about the organizations upon which they rely for the satisfaction of their vital interests. The provision of that information is governed by principles of democratic transparency. Democratic transparency both extends and critiques current enthusiasms about transparency. It urges us to conceptualize information politically, as a resource to turn the behavior of large organizations in socially beneficial ways. Transparency efforts have targets, and we should think of those targets as large organizations: public and civic, but especially private and corporate. Democratic transparency consists of four principles. First, information about the operations and actions of large organizations that affect citizens’ interests should be rich, deep, and readily available to the public. Second, the amount of available information should be proportionate to the extent to which those organizations jeopardize citizens’ interests. Third, information should be organized and provided in ways that are accessible to individuals and groups that use that information. Finally, the social, political, and economic structures of society should be organized in ways that allow individuals and groups to take action based on Infotopia’s public disclosures.

Gastil, J. and R. Richards (2013). “Making Direct Democracy Deliberative through Random Assemblies.” Politics & Society 41(2): 253-281.

Direct-democratic processes have won popular support but fall far short of the standards of deliberative democracy. Initiative and referendum processes furnish citizens with insufficient information about policy problems, inadequate choices among policy solutions, flawed criteria for choosing among such solutions, and few opportunities for reflection on those choices prior to decision making. We suggest a way to make direct democracy more deliberative by grafting randomly selected citizen assemblies onto existing institutions and practices. After reviewing the problems that beset modern direct-democratic elections and the long history of randomly selected citizen assemblies, we propose five different varieties of randomly constituted citizen bodies—Priority Conferences, Design Panels, Citizens’ Assemblies, Citizens’ Initiative Reviews, and Policy Juries. After selecting members through stratified random sampling of citizens, each of these assemblies would operate at a different stage of the legislative process, from initial problem identification through approval of a finished ballot measure. Highly structured procedures guided by professional moderators and featuring expert testimony on policy and legal matters would help to ensure deliberative quality, and careful institutional designs would make each body politically powerful. In the end, these citizen bodies would be likely to address the deliberative deficit of direct democracy and better achieve the public’s desired policy objectives.

Van Parijs, P. (2013). “The Universal Basic Income: Why Utopian Thinking Matters, and How Sociologists Can Contribute to It.” Politics & Society 41(2): 171-182.

Utopian thinking consists of formulating proposals for radical reforms, justifying them on the basis of normative principles combined with the best possible scientific analysis of the root causes of the problems the proposals are meant to address, and subjecting these proposals to unindulgent critical scrutiny. Such utopian thinking is indispensable, and contributing to it is part of sociology’s core business. This article illustrates these claims by considering one particular utopian proposal: an unconditional basic income paid to every member of society on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It summarizes the main arguments that support this proposal, mentions a number of contexts in which it is being taken seriously, and sketches a number of ways in which sociological insights and research are crucially relevant to the discussion of the economic and political sustainability of an unconditional basic income.

Unemployment benefit generosity before and during the crisis

What countries offer the most generous replacement of lost income in the event of job loss? And how have governments changed unemployment benefit since the onset of the economic crisis?
Thanks to a new dataset assembled by Olaf van Vliet & Koen Caminada (version 1, January 2012), we now have data on unemployment benefit schemes in 34 welfare states from the 1970s until 2009.
Below I chart the net replacement rate for an average worker in a one earner household with two children for 2006 and the latest year available in the dataset (2009).
First, as is well documented in the welfare state literature, notice the difference compared to the gross replacement rates which I discussed in an older post. In general, gross replacement rates tend to under-estimate the extent to which liberal welfare states such as the US compensate for income loss.
Second, one can identify three paths. Southern European countries such as Italy and Greece and European liberal market economies such as the UK and Ireland exhibit increases in their replacement rates.
Another group of countries have mildly reduced their replacement rates. This includes eastern European countries such as Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Hungary but also non-EU liberal market economies such as the US and Australia. The scandinavian countries (Denmark, Finland and especially Sweden) have also reduced their unemployment benefit entitlements.

Source: Olaf Van Vliet & Koen Caminada (2012), ‘Unemployment replacement rates dataset among 34 welfare states 1971-2009: An update, extension and modification of the Scruggs’ Welfare State Entitlements Data Set’, NEUJOBS Special Report No. 2, Leiden University.

New article on "Associational Networks and Welfare States in Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan"

Cheol-Sung Lee (2012)

Abstract
This article investigates the structures of civic networks and their roles in steering the political choices of party and union elites regarding the retrenchment or expansion of welfare states in four recently democratized developing countries. Utilizing coaffiliation networks built upon two waves of World Values Surveys and evidence from comparative case studies for Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan, the study develops two explanatory factors that account for variations in welfare politics: cohesiveness and embeddedness. In Argentina and, to a lesser degree, in Taiwan, party and union leaders’ cohesive relationships, being disarticulated from the informal civic sphere, allowed them to conduct elite-driven social policy reforms from above, by launching radical neoliberal reforms (Argentina) or by developing a generous transfer-centered welfare state (Taiwan). In Brazil and South Korea, however, party and union leaders’ durable solidarity embedded in wider civic communities enabled them to resist the retrenchment of welfare states (Brazil) or implement universal social policies (South Korea) based on bottom-up mobilization of welfare demands. This article demonstrates that elites in the formal sector make markedly different political choices when confronting economic crisis and democratic competition depending upon their organizational connections in formal and informal civic networks.

Education reduces gender inequality through its employment effect

Women’s employment, education,and the gender gap in 17 countries 

“Data from the Luxembourg Income Study show that, among married or cohabiting mothers, better educated women are more likely to be employed; gender inequality in annual earnings is thus less extreme among the well educated than among those with less education, driven largely by educated women’s higher employment” (Monthly Labor Review, April 2012, Vol. 135, Number )

World ranking in Unemployment Benefit replacement rates

13 Comments
In times of crisis, the ability of workers who lose their jobs to retain their purchasing power has important social and economic implications. A high replacement rate (ratio of unemployment benefits a worker receives relative to the worker’s last gross earning) ensures that the negative effects of rising unemployment on aggregate demand are mitigated. It also prevents workers from falling into poverty when they lose their jobs.
The table below shows the gross replacement rate in the first year of unemployment for as many countries as is available. The data is taken from a recent IMF working paper (see end of post for full reference). I have ranked countries from highest to lowest (restricting the sample to those countries which replacement rate is superior to 0). 

An interesting finding is that European countries did not have the monopoly of high replacement rates in 2000. This challenges the notion that high economic development is a necessary or sufficient condition for protection fo workers to be high. Indeed, workers who have unemployment insurance in non-EU countries sometimes score higher. For instance, in the top 10 one finds Ukraine, Algeria, and Taiwan, while Russia, Tunisia, Romania and Hong Kong make it into the top 20.
The Anglo Saxon countries rank poorly: UK (46th), Australia (43rd) and Ireland (39th); US (31st) i.e.: coming after Venezuala, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Belarus… The picture for Eastern European countries is more mixed with Bulgaria (16th), Romania (18th), Ukraine (9th) doing ok, whereas others do not do so well: Estonia (48th), Poland (41st), Czech Republic (42nd).

Country  Gross Replacement Rate, year 1   Ranking
Netherlands 0.7 1
Switzerland 0.687 2
Sweden 0.685 3
Portugal 0.65 4
Spain 0.635 5
Norway 0.624 6
Algeria 0.612 7
Taiwan 0.6 8
Ukraine 0.56 9
Italy 0.527 10
Denmark 0.521 11
Russia 0.505 12
Tunisia 0.5 13
Finland 0.494 14
France 0.479 15
Bulgaria 0.473 16
Canada 0.459 17
Romania 0.45 18
Hong Kong 0.41 19
Austria 0.398 20
Belgium 0.373 21
Argentina 0.354 22
Germany 0.353 23
Greece 0.346 24
Azerbaijan 0.338 25
Egypt 0.329 26
Venezuela 0.325 27
Belarus 0.313 28
Israel 0.307 29
Japan 0.289 30
United States 0.275 31
Kyrgyzstan 0.255 32
New Zealand 0.254 33
Latvia 0.253 34
India 0.25 38
Korea, South 0.25 37
Uruguay 0.25 36
Uzbekistan 0.25 35
Ireland 0.238 39
Hungary 0.235 40
Poland 0.226 41
Czech Republic 0.225 42
Australia 0.21 43
Turkey 0.206 44
Albania 0.202 45
United Kingdom 0.189 46
Brazil 0.152 47
Estonia 0.132 48
Lithuania 0.117 49
Chile 0.115 50
Georgia 0.09 51

Data taken from: Mariya Aleksynska and Martin Schindler (2011) Labor Market Regulations in Low-, Middle- and High-Income Countries: A New Panel Database. IMF Working Paper.