Families Facing the Crisis

Is Social Investment a Sustainable Social Policy Strategy

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12425895
AutoresSilke Bothfeld (0000-0002-5647-1958, Hochschule Bremen, autor correspondente), S Rouault (Hochschule Bremen)
Ano2014
Volume22
Fascículo1
Páginas60-85
Data de publicação2014-06-12
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Politics International Studies in Gender State & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1072-4745 • E-ISSN: 1468-2893
EditoraOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/sp/jxu014
OpenAlexW2129151196
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas18
Referências citadas22

Since the end of the 1990s, the social investment approach has become a new paradigm in academic and political discourse on social policymaking, above all at the European level. As the social investment approach to social policy aims at tackling the most vulnerable social groups by offering educational programs, supporting the access to employment, especially for young adults and women, and putting an end to the intergenerational transfer of poverty, it appears promising as a new overarching social policy strategy. It is, however—conceptually and in practice—hardly connected to the traditional logic of social provision, which is to compensate for individual incapacity to work or market failure. We claim that the social investment approach falls short of providing arguments for decent and sustainable social protection for the whole population, and that an implementation of this strategy as it is formulated will rather increase than reduce overall social inequality. Trade-offs between the new social investment strategy and traditional redistributive social policy objectives become particularly clear in the analysis of family policy. Our analysis identifies such basic trade-offs between the social investment approach and more “traditional” family policies. We argue that the EU member states will adopt a pragmatic, selective or comprehensive approach to social investment according to their basic welfare-type pattern. The comparative analysis of changes in family policies since the outbreak of the crisis (from 2008 to mid-2012) in six European countries provides the empirical basis for our argument

Argument (complex analysis · Economic growth · Economic system · Economics · Investment (military · Market economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Public economics · Social policy · Social protection · Sociology · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Social Policy and Reform Studies