Mikael Nygård
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 338116 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Mikael Nygård |
| NOMBRES | Mikael |
| APELLIDO | Nygård |
| FIRMA | NYGÅRD M |
| AFILIACIONES | Åbo Akademi University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3928-4114 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 38 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 109 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2004 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Multidimensional Civic Engagement in Later Life in 32 European Countries—an Exploration of the Roles of Socio-Structural Resources and Welfare State Commitment
This study examines individual socio-structural resources and country-level welfare state commitment in relation to four different aspects of civic engagement in later life. Multilevel logistic regression was used to analyze data from the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) collected from people aged 65 and over in 32 European countries during 2016–2017 ( n = 9265). On the individual level, socio-structural resources in terms of educational le…
Unlocking Climate Action
Maintaining planetary borders is crucial to prevent significant Earth system shifts. Climate change, primarily driven by carbon emissions, necessitates reducing urban carbon footprints. Cities contribute significantly to emissions, and citizens play a crucial role in creating ecologically sustainable cities by changing attitudes. This systematic literature review aims to identify effective strategies for motivating citizen participation in climat…
The role of ethnolinguistic identity, vitality and trust in perceived language climate change
This article explores perceived language climate in a nation-specific setting – a largely unexplored research field. It contributes to the literature on intergroup relations (specifically the relations between ethnolinguistic majority and minority groups) in terms of social identity and ethnolinguistic vitality theories. More specifically, the research focus on Swedish speakers in Finland and analyse the perceived language climate from a societal…
Using the Andersen Behavioural Model to explore formal support use among older informal carers in Finland and Sweden
This comparative study employs the Andersen Behavioural Model to investigate the role of predisposing, enabling and need factors for formal support use among older informal carers in Finland and Sweden. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed using the Gerontological Regional Database (GERDA) survey data from 2021/2022, and 1167 informal carers were included. Living in Finland, lack of financial strain, non‐governmental organisation m…
Power and inequality
We explore the link between the distribution of power and income inequality in rich capitalist democracies since 1960. We advance understanding of the impact of government ideology, a key indicator of the distribution of power, in two ways. First, previous research has tended to focus on government ideology at the country level. We make use of party manifesto data to introduce a novel global ideology measure that captures a global shift rightward…
Poverty as a Driver of Stigma among Finnish Children during the Covid-19 Pandemic– Evidence from the 2021 Children’s Voice Survey
Stigma is a social problem that can have severe outcomes on both individuals and society. Previous research shows that children’s experiences of stigma may increase during times of stress and hardship such as the Covid-19 pandemic, but also that poverty and a lack of resources can create stigmatization. However, both stigma and poverty are multidimensional phenomena that have been investigated mainly among adults using single indicators. This art…
Gender equality or employment promotion? The politicization of parental leave policy in Finland
In 2022, a new parental leave system with equal leave rights for parents saw daylight in Finland. The road towards this reform was not entirely uncontroversial, and one stumbling block was different interpretations of the meaning of gender equality. This article contributes to the literature by analysing how seven political parties in Finland politicised the idea of gender equality and leave quotas during the 2010s. We argue that ideological fact…
Risk factors for loneliness among older people in a Nordic regional context – a longitudinal study
The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of loneliness among older people and to identify risk factors for loneliness in a Nordic regional context over a six-year period. Longitudinal data from the Gerontological Regional Database (GERDA) study of 4,269 older adults living in northern Sweden and western Finland, aged 65, 70, 75 and 80 at baseline in 2010, were analysed. Logistic regressions were used to analyse socio-demographic, socia…
Disentangling the Concept of Well-Being in Very Old Age Using Rodgers’ Evolutionary Concept Analysis
Well-being has received increasing attention from researchers and policymakers, and its promotion could be considered pivotal to handle the challenges of aging populations. However, many different well-being concepts have been used inconsistently, and it remains unclear what the concept of well-being refers to among the oldest segments of the population. Hence, there is a need for a more cohesive understanding of the meaning of the concept in thi…
Being Small and Outnumbered
Our study aims to analyze the social exclusion of older Swedish and Finnish speakers living as linguistic minorities in bilingual municipalities in Finland, where municipal authorities are required to offer services in both languages. Data was taken from the 2016 Language Barometer Survey, measuring the quality of language services in bilingual municipalities (n=33). For the purposes of our study, we focused on 2,030 people between the ages of 60…
Capabilities in care for older adults in Finnish familialistic policy transformations
As public provision of health and social care to older adults remains fixed or is scaled back, informal care is increasingly emphasised in policy and in practice. This is also the case in the Nordic welfare state of Finland. Little is known about how individual care arrangements are made. In this study, the capability approach is used to investigate the processes from resources to the actual functionings of receiving care of one older informal ca…
Social Inclusion or Gender Equality? Political Discourses on Parental Leave in Finland and Sweden
During the 2010s, both Finland and Sweden made advancements in their parental leave systems by widening the right to paid parental leave to a greater diversity of family constellations and investing in gender-equal leave distribution through longer leave periods reserved for the father. However, in the latter respect, Sweden has remained more successful than Finland. This article analyses government and political party discourses in Finland and S…
Changes in active ageing in a Nordic regional context
The study examined changes in active ageing among 65/66‐ and 75/76‐year‐olds in northern Sweden and western Finland. Data were retrieved from a repeated cross‐sectional survey conducted in 2005 and 2016. Logistic regression was used to estimate the probability of ageing actively in terms of employment, social and political participation, confidence in healthcare, economic situation, self‐rated health and social contacts. The results showed no sig…
Financial Stress and Subjective Wellbeing among Children -Evidence from Finland
In this article we analyse how subjective wellbeing amongst Finnish children is associated with experiences of financial stress, that is, worries about money and one’s financial situation. We focus on both affective and cognitive components of subjective wellbeing in order to receive a broader understanding on children’s subjective wellbeing. We use Finnish data from the International survey of children’s lives conducted by the Children’s Worlds …
Discarding social investment and redistribution in the name of austerity? The case of Finnish family policy reforms 2007—2015
Since the 1970s, Finland has conducted family policies that could be labelled social investments, for example, investments in work–family balance or public childcare, while at the same time it has protected the economic standard of families with children through various income transfers. However, after the 2008–2009 financial crisis these policies including those with socially investing objectives have been increasingly subjected to cuts in benef…
Economic strain and parental coping – evidence from Finland
The international financial crisis 2008–2009 led to a period of economic recession in Europe, and in Finland this lasted until around 2016–2017. The recession had a number of negative outcomes, such as higher unemployment, higher poverty rates, and an overall higher economic strain for households with children. The aim of this article is to analyse the association between economic strain and parental coping in a Finnish context, but also to asses…
The Role of Cash Benefit and In-Kind Benefit Spending for Child Poverty in Times of Austerity
This article investigates the development of two forms of public spending on families, as well as their role for child poverty in 22 European countries during the period 2006–2015. It uses aggregated data on child poverty from Eurostat and data relating to public spending on families from the OECD SOCX database. It analyses the association between child poverty and public family spending on cash benefits and in-kind benefits, respectively. The fi…
Radical Reform Or Piecemeal Adjustments? The Case of Finnish Family Policy Reforms
Since the economic crisis, many welfare states reformed their social security systems to cut social expenditure, even in policy fields protecting the most vulnerable, such as family policy. Using qualitative content analysis, this article systematically examines reforms pursued in Finnish family policy 2007–2017, and establishes the direction and magnitude of these reforms. The result show that these fields were frequently reformed, containing bo…
The role of discourse in family policy reform
Since 2010 and the onset of the economic crisis, Finnish governments have pressed for structural reforms, including unpopular cuts to family benefits and services. This article analyses the government discourse used for legitimating some of these reforms: the cutbacks in child benefit and the restriction of full-time childcare. It also assesses whether this discourse bore the hallmarks of a neoliberal austerity discourse, which could suggest that…
Risks, coping strategies and family wellbeing
Purpose As a member of the Nordic welfare regime, Finland has been acknowledged for its encompassing family policies with high degrees of parental employment and low incidence of poverty. During recent years, however, sluggish growth, high levels of unemployment and recurrent austerity measures have gradually undermined the economic security of families, notably among single-parent and multi-child families, and this has put families under increas…
Equal Treatment, Labor Promotion, or Social Investment? Reconciliation Policy in Finnish and Dutch Coalition Programs 1995–2016
This article investigates government‐level intentions on work/family reconciliation policies in Finland and the Netherlands. By analyzing the coalition programs between 1995 and 2016, it traces three dominant ideas of equal treatment, employment promotion, and social investment in the reconciliation policy discourses in these countries. The content analysis shows a general tendency toward labor promotion in both countries and weak steps toward so…
Freedom of choice, gender equality, or employment promotion? Finnish party positions on childcare in the light of election manifestos 2015
The principle of freedom of choice in childcare matters has been a central element of Finnish family policy since the 1980s and is something that makes the country unique in an international comparison. One the one hand, this principle has been manifested as a legislated right for parents, notably mothers, to choose paid work supported by the use of public childcare. On the other hand, it has also given parents with children under three the right…
Poverty and Old Age in Scandinavia
Patterns and Drivers of Political Participation among Ninth-graders
The aim of this article is to investigate patterns and drivers of political participation of young people in Finland by using data from the Ostrobothnian Youth survey, a web-based survey conducted in 2010–11 among 1674 ninth-graders in the West-Finnish region of Ostrobothnia. Using the ‘resource model’ of civic voluntarism as a theoretical framework, the article addresses two research questions: (i) what forms of political participation do ninth-…
Social capital and self-rated health among older adults
The aim of this paper is to investigate the association between structural and cognitive aspects of social capital and self-rated health among adults aged 50 or more, living in three countries: Finland, Poland and Spain. The study, which was based on data from the European Social Survey (2008/09), was a part of the EU research project COURAGE in Europe. More specifically the paper assesses the association between social capital indicators – infor…
Welfare-Ideological Change in Scandinavia
During the 1990s, the Nordic welfare states, notably Finland and Sweden, faced serious challenges that triggered a number of welfare restructuring processes. This article focuses on the political determinants of these processes, or, more exactly, it analyses changes in partisan welfare policy positions in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1970 and 2003. The main goal of the article is to chart possible changes in party positions on soci…
The Role of Cash Benefit and In-Kind Benefit Spending for Child Poverty in Times of Austerity
This article investigates the development of two forms of public spending on families, as well as their role for child poverty in 22 European countries during the period 2006–2015. It uses aggregated data on child poverty from Eurostat and data relating to public spending on families from the OECD SOCX database. It analyses the association between child poverty and public family spending on cash benefits and in-kind benefits, respectively. The fi…
Poverty and Old Age in Scandinavia
Senior citizens and political participation – evidence from a Finnish regional study
The aim is to analyse political participation among senior citizens in the West-Finnish region Österbotten/Pohjanmaa by using data from the 2005 GERDA (gerontological regional database) survey. The first research question related to patterns of political participation and the extent to which older people in this region engage in voting and non-institutionalised forms of participation. Secondly, the driving forces behind different dimensions of pa…
Is the association between social capital and health robust across Nordic regions? Evidence from a cross‐sectional study of older adults
Nyqvist F, Nygård M. Is the association between social capital and health robust across Nordic regions? Evidence from a cross‐sectional study of older adults The study examined the association between structural and cognitive social capital and self‐rated health among 65‐ and 75‐year‐olds in Västerbotten in Sweden and Österbotten and Pohjanmaa in Finland. Data were retrieved from a cross‐sectional postal questionnaire survey conducted in 2005 and…
Freedom of choice, gender equality, or employment promotion? Finnish party positions on childcare in the light of election manifestos 2015
The principle of freedom of choice in childcare matters has been a central element of Finnish family policy since the 1980s and is something that makes the country unique in an international comparison. One the one hand, this principle has been manifested as a legislated right for parents, notably mothers, to choose paid work supported by the use of public childcare. On the other hand, it has also given parents with children under three the right…
Social capital and self-rated health among older adults
The aim of this paper is to investigate the association between structural and cognitive aspects of social capital and self-rated health among adults aged 50 or more, living in three countries: Finland, Poland and Spain. The study, which was based on data from the European Social Survey (2008/09), was a part of the EU research project COURAGE in Europe. More specifically the paper assesses the association between social capital indicators – infor…
Poverty, Families and the Investment State
Finland and Germany are traditionally seen as members of different welfare regimes with rather different approaches to family policies. During the last decade or so, poverty concerns have received an increasingly prominent position within family policy in both countries. The objects for these concerns have been different constellations of ‘poor’ families, and the policies pursued to counteract poverty have ranged from targeted measures to investm…
Discarding social investment and redistribution in the name of austerity? The case of Finnish family policy reforms 2007—2015
Since the 1970s, Finland has conducted family policies that could be labelled social investments, for example, investments in work–family balance or public childcare, while at the same time it has protected the economic standard of families with children through various income transfers. However, after the 2008–2009 financial crisis these policies including those with socially investing objectives have been increasingly subjected to cuts in benef…
Does social capital enhance political participation of older adults? A multi-level analysis of older Finns and Swedes
This article contributes to the literature on political gerontology by analysing the role that social capital plays in the political participation of older adults. More specifically, the aim is to test the importance of individual-level and contextual-level social capital for different types of political participation of older adults in a Scandinavian setting by using survey data from Finland and Sweden ( N = 6838). The results show that even tho…
The financial crisis and recent family policy reforms in Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom
The turmoil created by the financial crisis and economic recession in Europe has served as an impetus for austerity measures in many countries. In this article, we ask whether these crises have also triggered reforms in family policy, and we focus on three European welfare states – Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom – countries that are often considered members of different family policy regimes. The article addresses two main research quest…
Radical Reform Or Piecemeal Adjustments? The Case of Finnish Family Policy Reforms
Since the economic crisis, many welfare states reformed their social security systems to cut social expenditure, even in policy fields protecting the most vulnerable, such as family policy. Using qualitative content analysis, this article systematically examines reforms pursued in Finnish family policy 2007–2017, and establishes the direction and magnitude of these reforms. The result show that these fields were frequently reformed, containing bo…
Welfare or workfare
The aim of the article is to analyse changing partisan constructions of unemployment security in Finland during the 1990s. In the article, a corpus of 143 texts comprising partisan statements on un/employment policies is analysed by using Perelman’s (1971/1958) rhetorical design. The focus lies on how the leading parties interpreted state responsibility for labour market failures, the nature of social rights for unemployed persons, and the genero…
The role of ethnolinguistic identity, vitality and trust in perceived language climate change
This article explores perceived language climate in a nation-specific setting – a largely unexplored research field. It contributes to the literature on intergroup relations (specifically the relations between ethnolinguistic majority and minority groups) in terms of social identity and ethnolinguistic vitality theories. More specifically, the research focus on Swedish speakers in Finland and analyse the perceived language climate from a societal…
Social Inclusion or Gender Equality? Political Discourses on Parental Leave in Finland and Sweden
During the 2010s, both Finland and Sweden made advancements in their parental leave systems by widening the right to paid parental leave to a greater diversity of family constellations and investing in gender-equal leave distribution through longer leave periods reserved for the father. However, in the latter respect, Sweden has remained more successful than Finland. This article analyses government and political party discourses in Finland and S…
Financial Stress and Subjective Wellbeing among Children -Evidence from Finland
In this article we analyse how subjective wellbeing amongst Finnish children is associated with experiences of financial stress, that is, worries about money and one’s financial situation. We focus on both affective and cognitive components of subjective wellbeing in order to receive a broader understanding on children’s subjective wellbeing. We use Finnish data from the International survey of children’s lives conducted by the Children’s Worlds …
Patterns and Drivers of Political Participation among Ninth-graders
The aim of this article is to investigate patterns and drivers of political participation of young people in Finland by using data from the Ostrobothnian Youth survey, a web-based survey conducted in 2010–11 among 1674 ninth-graders in the West-Finnish region of Ostrobothnia. Using the ‘resource model’ of civic voluntarism as a theoretical framework, the article addresses two research questions: (i) what forms of political participation do ninth-…
Conceptions and tendencies of age discrimination and attitudes towards older people in selected regions in Finland and Sweden
This study aims to access and explore tendencies in the conceptualization of age discrimination and the perceived attitudes towards older people in regions of Finland and Sweden. The analysis draws on GERDA survey data (GErontological Regional DAtabase), a repeated cross-sectional study in which data was collected in 2005 and 2010. The results indicate that the conceptions of age discrimination are changing in a positive direction, which is contr…
Risk factors for loneliness among older people in a Nordic regional context – a longitudinal study
The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of loneliness among older people and to identify risk factors for loneliness in a Nordic regional context over a six-year period. Longitudinal data from the Gerontological Regional Database (GERDA) study of 4,269 older adults living in northern Sweden and western Finland, aged 65, 70, 75 and 80 at baseline in 2010, were analysed. Logistic regressions were used to analyse socio-demographic, socia…
Changes in active ageing in a Nordic regional context
The study examined changes in active ageing among 65/66‐ and 75/76‐year‐olds in northern Sweden and western Finland. Data were retrieved from a repeated cross‐sectional survey conducted in 2005 and 2016. Logistic regression was used to estimate the probability of ageing actively in terms of employment, social and political participation, confidence in healthcare, economic situation, self‐rated health and social contacts. The results showed no sig…
Economic strain and parental coping – evidence from Finland
The international financial crisis 2008–2009 led to a period of economic recession in Europe, and in Finland this lasted until around 2016–2017. The recession had a number of negative outcomes, such as higher unemployment, higher poverty rates, and an overall higher economic strain for households with children. The aim of this article is to analyse the association between economic strain and parental coping in a Finnish context, but also to asses…
The role of discourse in family policy reform
Since 2010 and the onset of the economic crisis, Finnish governments have pressed for structural reforms, including unpopular cuts to family benefits and services. This article analyses the government discourse used for legitimating some of these reforms: the cutbacks in child benefit and the restriction of full-time childcare. It also assesses whether this discourse bore the hallmarks of a neoliberal austerity discourse, which could suggest that…
Equal Treatment, Labor Promotion, or Social Investment? Reconciliation Policy in Finnish and Dutch Coalition Programs 1995–2016
This article investigates government‐level intentions on work/family reconciliation policies in Finland and the Netherlands. By analyzing the coalition programs between 1995 and 2016, it traces three dominant ideas of equal treatment, employment promotion, and social investment in the reconciliation policy discourses in these countries. The content analysis shows a general tendency toward labor promotion in both countries and weak steps toward so…
Competent Actors or Vulnerable Objects? Constructions of Children and State Intervention among Finnish Politicians in Relation to the Child Protection Act 1983 and 2006
This article investigates constructions of children and state intervention among Finnish MPs during the parliamentary debates relating to the 1983 and 2006 enactments of the Child Protection Act. It seeks to illuminate the politicization of children within a parliamentary framework, and to illuminate the role of dominant discourses, ideas and ideological views in shaping child protection policy. The research data consist of the official transcrip…
Välfärdsstat och ideologi
The article investigates the changing welfare attitudes among Finnish parties during the 90s. During this particular period, the objective of maintaining full employment was abandoned and essential cutbacks in the Finnish welfare system were made. The main question in this article is whether these policies were made possible by changing conceptions of the idea of the welfare state among the political elites. The results show that parties in gener…
Welfare-Ideological Change in Scandinavia
During the 1990s, the Nordic welfare states, notably Finland and Sweden, faced serious challenges that triggered a number of welfare restructuring processes. This article focuses on the political determinants of these processes, or, more exactly, it analyses changes in partisan welfare policy positions in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1970 and 2003. The main goal of the article is to chart possible changes in party positions on soci…
Welfare or workfare
The aim of the article is to analyse changing partisan constructions of unemployment security in Finland during the 1990s. In the article, a corpus of 143 texts comprising partisan statements on un/employment policies is analysed by using Perelman’s (1971/1958) rhetorical design. The focus lies on how the leading parties interpreted state responsibility for labour market failures, the nature of social rights for unemployed persons, and the genero…
Competent Actors or Vulnerable Objects? Constructions of Children and State Intervention among Finnish Politicians in Relation to the Child Protection Act 1983 and 2006
This article investigates constructions of children and state intervention among Finnish MPs during the parliamentary debates relating to the 1983 and 2006 enactments of the Child Protection Act. It seeks to illuminate the politicization of children within a parliamentary framework, and to illuminate the role of dominant discourses, ideas and ideological views in shaping child protection policy. The research data consist of the official transcrip…
Poverty, Families and the Investment State
Finland and Germany are traditionally seen as members of different welfare regimes with rather different approaches to family policies. During the last decade or so, poverty concerns have received an increasingly prominent position within family policy in both countries. The objects for these concerns have been different constellations of ‘poor’ families, and the policies pursued to counteract poverty have ranged from targeted measures to investm…
Is the association between social capital and health robust across Nordic regions? Evidence from a cross‐sectional study of older adults
Nyqvist F, Nygård M. Is the association between social capital and health robust across Nordic regions? Evidence from a cross‐sectional study of older adults The study examined the association between structural and cognitive social capital and self‐rated health among 65‐ and 75‐year‐olds in Västerbotten in Sweden and Österbotten and Pohjanmaa in Finland. Data were retrieved from a cross‐sectional postal questionnaire survey conducted in 2005 and…
Political participation of older adults in Scandinavia - the civic voluntarism model revisited? A multi-level analysis of three types of political participation
This article examines political participation among older adults in österbotten, Finland, and Västerbotten, Sweden. Two specific hypotheses are tested. First, we anticipate that older adults are loyal voters but less avid in engaging in politics between elections. Second, we expect individuallevel resources to explain why older people participate in politics. The article offers two contributions to the literature on political participation of old…
Conceptions and tendencies of age discrimination and attitudes
This study aims to access and explore tendencies in the conceptualization of age discrimination and the perceived attitudes towards older people in regions of Finland and Sweden. The analysis draws on GERDA survey data (GErontological Regional DAtabase), a repeated cross-sectional study in which data was collected in 2005 and 2010. The results indicate that the conceptions of age discrimination are changing in a positive direction, which is contr…
The financial crisis and recent family policy reforms in Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom
The turmoil created by the financial crisis and economic recession in Europe has served as an impetus for austerity measures in many countries. In this article, we ask whether these crises have also triggered reforms in family policy, and we focus on three European welfare states – Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom – countries that are often considered members of different family policy regimes. The article addresses two main research quest…
Senior citizens and political participation – evidence from a Finnish regional study
The aim is to analyse political participation among senior citizens in the West-Finnish region Österbotten/Pohjanmaa by using data from the 2005 GERDA (gerontological regional database) survey. The first research question related to patterns of political participation and the extent to which older people in this region engage in voting and non-institutionalised forms of participation. Secondly, the driving forces behind different dimensions of pa…
Conceptions and tendencies of age discrimination and attitudes towards older people in selected regions in Finland and Sweden
This study aims to access and explore tendencies in the conceptualization of age discrimination and the perceived attitudes towards older people in regions of Finland and Sweden. The analysis draws on GERDA survey data (GErontological Regional DAtabase), a repeated cross-sectional study in which data was collected in 2005 and 2010. The results indicate that the conceptions of age discrimination are changing in a positive direction, which is contr…
The (non)politicisation of age discrimination in Finland and Sweden
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the politicisation of age discrimination in relation to the enactment of anti-discrimination legislation in Finland and Sweden in the early-2000s. By showing how politicians constructed the meaning of age discrimination, it seeks to highlight the drivers of country variation in terms of the implementation of directives from the European Union (EU). Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a co…
Social capital and self-rated health among older adults
The aim of this paper is to investigate the association between structural and cognitive aspects of social capital and self-rated health among adults aged 50 or more, living in three countries: Finland, Poland and Spain. The study, which was based on data from the European Social Survey (2008/09), was a part of the EU research project COURAGE in Europe. More specifically the paper assesses the association between social capital indicators – infor…
Does social capital enhance political participation of older adults? A multi-level analysis of older Finns and Swedes
This article contributes to the literature on political gerontology by analysing the role that social capital plays in the political participation of older adults. More specifically, the aim is to test the importance of individual-level and contextual-level social capital for different types of political participation of older adults in a Scandinavian setting by using survey data from Finland and Sweden ( N = 6838). The results show that even tho…
Patterns and Drivers of Political Participation among Ninth-graders
The aim of this article is to investigate patterns and drivers of political participation of young people in Finland by using data from the Ostrobothnian Youth survey, a web-based survey conducted in 2010–11 among 1674 ninth-graders in the West-Finnish region of Ostrobothnia. Using the ‘resource model’ of civic voluntarism as a theoretical framework, the article addresses two research questions: (i) what forms of political participation do ninth-…
Equal Treatment, Labor Promotion, or Social Investment? Reconciliation Policy in Finnish and Dutch Coalition Programs 1995–2016
This article investigates government‐level intentions on work/family reconciliation policies in Finland and the Netherlands. By analyzing the coalition programs between 1995 and 2016, it traces three dominant ideas of equal treatment, employment promotion, and social investment in the reconciliation policy discourses in these countries. The content analysis shows a general tendency toward labor promotion in both countries and weak steps toward so…
Freedom of choice, gender equality, or employment promotion? Finnish party positions on childcare in the light of election manifestos 2015
The principle of freedom of choice in childcare matters has been a central element of Finnish family policy since the 1980s and is something that makes the country unique in an international comparison. One the one hand, this principle has been manifested as a legislated right for parents, notably mothers, to choose paid work supported by the use of public childcare. On the other hand, it has also given parents with children under three the right…
Poverty and Old Age in Scandinavia
Radical Reform Or Piecemeal Adjustments? The Case of Finnish Family Policy Reforms
Since the economic crisis, many welfare states reformed their social security systems to cut social expenditure, even in policy fields protecting the most vulnerable, such as family policy. Using qualitative content analysis, this article systematically examines reforms pursued in Finnish family policy 2007–2017, and establishes the direction and magnitude of these reforms. The result show that these fields were frequently reformed, containing bo…
The role of discourse in family policy reform
Since 2010 and the onset of the economic crisis, Finnish governments have pressed for structural reforms, including unpopular cuts to family benefits and services. This article analyses the government discourse used for legitimating some of these reforms: the cutbacks in child benefit and the restriction of full-time childcare. It also assesses whether this discourse bore the hallmarks of a neoliberal austerity discourse, which could suggest that…
Risks, coping strategies and family wellbeing
Purpose As a member of the Nordic welfare regime, Finland has been acknowledged for its encompassing family policies with high degrees of parental employment and low incidence of poverty. During recent years, however, sluggish growth, high levels of unemployment and recurrent austerity measures have gradually undermined the economic security of families, notably among single-parent and multi-child families, and this has put families under increas…
Discarding social investment and redistribution in the name of austerity? The case of Finnish family policy reforms 2007—2015
Since the 1970s, Finland has conducted family policies that could be labelled social investments, for example, investments in work–family balance or public childcare, while at the same time it has protected the economic standard of families with children through various income transfers. However, after the 2008–2009 financial crisis these policies including those with socially investing objectives have been increasingly subjected to cuts in benef…
Economic strain and parental coping – evidence from Finland
The international financial crisis 2008–2009 led to a period of economic recession in Europe, and in Finland this lasted until around 2016–2017. The recession had a number of negative outcomes, such as higher unemployment, higher poverty rates, and an overall higher economic strain for households with children. The aim of this article is to analyse the association between economic strain and parental coping in a Finnish context, but also to asses…
The Role of Cash Benefit and In-Kind Benefit Spending for Child Poverty in Times of Austerity
This article investigates the development of two forms of public spending on families, as well as their role for child poverty in 22 European countries during the period 2006–2015. It uses aggregated data on child poverty from Eurostat and data relating to public spending on families from the OECD SOCX database. It analyses the association between child poverty and public family spending on cash benefits and in-kind benefits, respectively. The fi…
Financial Stress and Subjective Wellbeing among Children -Evidence from Finland
In this article we analyse how subjective wellbeing amongst Finnish children is associated with experiences of financial stress, that is, worries about money and one’s financial situation. We focus on both affective and cognitive components of subjective wellbeing in order to receive a broader understanding on children’s subjective wellbeing. We use Finnish data from the International survey of children’s lives conducted by the Children’s Worlds …
Political science (32 obras) · Sociology (26 obras) · Economics (25 obras) · Politics (22 obras) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (22 obras) · Psychology (21 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Demographic economics (13 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Economic growth (12 obras)