Do standard classifications still represent European welfare typologies? Novel evidence from studies on health and social care

Bibliographic Data

ID8019046
AuthorsGiovanni Bertin (0000-0002-3354-8692, Ca' Foscari University of Venice), Ludovico Carrino (0000-0002-5082-5508, King's College London), Marta Pantalone (0000-0002-9452-3026, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume281
Pages114086-114086
Publication date2021-05-28
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Science & Medicine (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114086
PMID34118688
OpenAlexW3169861924
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited52

Due to the profound changes that have characterised welfare systems, the representativeness of standard welfare classifications such as Esping-Andersen's Three Worlds of Welfare (TWW) have been questioned. In response to concerns that welfare services do not share a common rationale across policy areas, new typologies focused on sub-areas of welfare provision have been introduced. Still, there is little evidence on whether such policy-specific typologies are (i) consistent with the standard TWW classifications; and (ii) consistent across policy areas. We reviewed 22 recent studies which identified welfare typologies in 12 European countries focusing on economically relevant areas such as healthcare and social care. We build novel indices of "welfare similarity" to measure the extent to which welfare systems have been grouped together in previous studies. Our findings are twofold: first, healthcare and social care policies are characterised by the coexistence and overlap of multiple regimes, i.e., a hybridisation of the original TWW taxonomy. Second, countries classifications are substantially different between healthcare and social care, which highlights the lack of coherence in welfare systems rationales across policy areas. Our findings suggest that comparative analyses of welfare systems should narrow their focus on policy-specific areas, which may prove more informative than general classifications of welfare states

Economic growth · Economics · Health care · Political science · Public economics · Representativeness heuristic · Social policy · Social Welfare · Sociology · Typology · Welfare · Employment and Welfare Studies · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Psychology · Social Policy and Reform Studies · Social Psychology

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