Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:12:45.722Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Worlds of Welfare Capitalism and Wellbeing: A Multilevel Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2012

CHRIS DEEMING  and
DAVID HAYES
CHRIS DEEMING*
Affiliation:
School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SS
DAVID HAYES
Affiliation:
Personal Finance Research Centre, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SS email: david.hayes@bristol.ac.uk
*
email: chris.deeming@bristol.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social scientists in the comparative policy tradition have long argued that welfare systems in modern capitalist societies can be broken down into ideal types. The idea of different worlds of welfare capitalism has an enduring appeal and growing practical policy relevance as governments seek to enhance population wellbeing. In this paper, we explore the worlds of welfare theory from the perspective of happiness. Drawing on data from the World Values Survey, we examine how welfare regimes may contribute to wellbeing and we consider the significance of our findings for the development of social policy. By using multilevel models, it is possible to separate out effects due to observed and unobserved, as well as both individual-level and country-level, welfare state characteristics and we can make inferences to the distribution of social wellbeing across welfare typologies. We find that respondents living in liberal and conservative countries experience at least twice the odds of unhappiness of those living in social democracies, after controlling for individual- and country-level explanatory variables. The observed differences between the worlds of welfare were found to be highly statistically significant.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 811 - 829
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alber, J. (1995), ‘A framework for the comparative study of social services’, Journal of European Social Policy, 5: 2, 131–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreß, H. J. and Heien, T. (2001), ‘Four worlds of welfare state attitudes? A comparison of Germany, Norway, and the United States’, European Sociological Review, 17: 4, 337–56.Google Scholar
Anttonen, A. and Sipilä, J. (1996), ‘European social care services: is it possible to identify models?’, Journal of European Social Policy, 6: 2, 87–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arcanjo, M. (2011), ‘Welfare state regimes and reforms: a classification of ten European countries between 1990 and 2006’, Social Policy and Society, 10: 2, 139–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bambra, C. (2006), ‘Research note: decommodification and the worlds of welfare revisited’, Journal of European Social Policy, 16: 1, 73–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bambra, C. (2007a), ‘Going beyond The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism: regime theory and public health research’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61: 12, 1098–102.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bambra, C. (2007b), ‘Sifting the wheat from the chaff’: a two-dimensional discriminant analysis of welfare state regime theory’, Social Policy and Administration, 41: 1, 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bambra, C., Netuveli, G. and Eikemo, T. A. (2010), ‘Welfare state regime life courses: the development of Western European welfare state regimes and age-related patterns of educational inequalities in self-reported health’, International Journal of Health Services, 40: 3, 399–420.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barr, N. (2001), The Welfare State as Piggy Bank: Information, Risk, and Uncertainty, and the Role of the State, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchflower, D. G. and Oswald, A. J. (2008), ‘Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?’, Social Science and Medicine, 66: 8, 1733–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Castles, F. G. (ed.) (1993), Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in Western Democracies, Aldershot, Dartmouth.Google Scholar
Castles, F. G., Leibfried, S., Lewis, J., Obinger, H. and Pierson, C. (eds.) (2010), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, Oxford, Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, A. E. (2006), A Note on Unhappiness and Unemployment Duration, Paris: Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clasen, J. (ed.) (2011), Converging Worlds of Welfare? British and German Social Policy in the 21st Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, M. (2011), Welfare, Cambridge: Polity.Google ScholarPubMed
Davies, R. B. (1994), ‘From cross-sectional to longitudinal analysis’, in Dale, A. and Davies, R. B. (eds.), Analysing Social and Political Change: A Casebook of Methods, London: Sage, pp. 20–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, H. (2010), Understanding Human Need, Bristol: Policy Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, H. (2012), Social Policy, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Deaton, A. (2008), ‘Worldwide, residents of richer nations more satisfied’, Perspectives, 160, http://www.nzbr.org.nz/site/nzbr/files/perspectives/issue160.pdf.Google Scholar
Di Tella, R. and MacCulloch, R. (2006), ‘Some uses of happiness data in economics’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20: 1, 25–46.Google Scholar
Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., Schimmack, U. and Helliwell, J. F. (2009), Well-Being for Public Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolan, P., Layard, R. and Metcalfe, R. (2011), Measuring Subjective Well-Being for Public Policy, Newport: Office for National Statistics.Google Scholar
Dolan, P. and Metcalfe, R. (2012), ‘Measuring subjective wellbeing: recommendations on measures for use by national governments’, Journal of Social Policy, 41: 2, 409–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolan, P., Peasgood, T. and White, M. (2008), ‘Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being’, Journal of Economic Psychology, 29: 1, 94–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Easterlin, R. A. (1974), ‘Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence’, in David, P. A. and Reder, M. W. (eds.), Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz, New York: Academic Press, pp. 89–125.Google Scholar
Easterlin, R. A. (2000), ‘The worldwide standard of living since 1800’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14: 1, 7–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Easterlin, R. A. (2001), ‘Life cycle welfare: evidence and conjecture’, Journal of Socio-Economics, 30: 1, 31–61.Google Scholar
Eikemo, T. A., Bambra, C., Judge, K. and Ringdal, K. (2008), ‘Welfare state regimes and differences in self-perceived health in Europe: a multilevel analysis’, Social Science and Medicine, 66: 11, 2281–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Engster, D. and Stensöta, H. O. (2011), ‘Do family policy regimes matter for children's well-being?’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 18: 1, 82–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1997), ‘Hybrid or unique?: the Japanese welfare state between Europe and America’, Journal of European Social Policy, 7: 3, 179–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferragina, E. and Seeleib-Kaiser, M. (2011), ‘Thematic review: welfare regime debate – past, present, futures?’, Policy and Politics, 39: 4, 583–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flavin, P., Pacek, A. C. and Radcliff, B. (2011), ‘State intervention and subjective well-being in advanced industrial democracies’, Politics and Policy, 39: 2, 251–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glasman, M., Rutherford, J., Stears, M. and White, S. (2011), The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox, Oxford London Seminars/Soundings 2011, http://www.soundings.org.uk/Google Scholar
Goodin, R. E., Headey, B., Muffels, R. and Dirven, H.-J. (1999), The Real Words of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, C. (2011), The Pursuit of Happiness: Toward an Economy of Well-Being, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Graham, C., Chattopadhyay, S. and Picon, M. (2010), ‘The Easterlin and other paradoxes: why both sides of the debate may be correct’, in Diener, E., Kahneman, D. and Helliwell, J. (eds.), International Differences in Well-Being, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 247–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosmer, D. W. and Lemeshow, S. (2000), Applied Logistic Regression, 2nd edition, New York: John Wiley & Sons.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jessop, B. (1995), ‘The regulation approach, governance and post-Fordism: alternative perspectives on economic and political change?’, Economy and Society, 24: 3, 307–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jugureanu, A. and Hughes, J. (2010), Lay Theories and the Cultural Contingency of Happiness, ESA Research Network Sociology of Culture Midterm Conference: Culture and the Making of Worlds, 14 October 2010, available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1692187.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. (1999), ‘Objective happiness’, in Kahneman, D., Diener, E. and Schwarz, N. (eds.), Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 3–25.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. and Krueger, A. B. (2006), ‘Developments in the measurement of subjective well-being’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20: 1, 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, B. (2011), A Minority View: What Beatrice Webb Would Say Now, London: Alliance Publishing Trust.Google Scholar
Kvist, J. and Greve, B. (2011), ‘Has the Nordic welfare model been transformed?’, Social Policy and Administration, 45: 2, 146–60.Google Scholar
Kvist, J., Fritzell, J., Hvinden, B. and Kangas, O. (eds.) (2011), Changing Social Equality: The Nordic Welfare Model in the 21st Century, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Layard, R. (2005), Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Norman, J. (2010), The Big Society: The Anatomy of the New Politics, Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press.Google Scholar
OECD (2012), Your Better Life Index, www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org.Google Scholar
Pierson, C. and Leimgruber, M. (2010), ‘Intellectual origins of the welfare state’, in Castles, F. G., Leibfried, S., Lewis, J., Obinger, H. and Pierson, C. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 32–44.Google Scholar
Pierson, P. (2000), ‘Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics’, The American Political Science Review, 94: 2, 251–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, M. (2011), ‘Reviews: The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, by Castles, F. G., Leibfried, S., Lewis, J., Obinger, H. and Pierson, C.’, Social Policy and Administration, 45: 3, 319–23.Google Scholar
Powell, M. and Barrientos, A. (2011), ‘An audit of the welfare modelling business’, Social Policy and Administration, 45: 1, 69–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasbash, J., Browne, W., Goldstein, H., Yang, M., Plewis, I., Healy, M., Woodhouse, G., Draper, D., Langford, I. and Lewis, T. (2000), A User's Guide to MLwiN, Centre for Multilevel Modelling, Institute of Education, University of London.Google Scholar
Saunders, P. and Evans, N. (eds.) (2010), Beware False Prophets: Equality, the Good Society and the Spirit Level, London: Policy Exchange.Google Scholar
Schmitt, C. and Starke, P. (2011), ‘Explaining convergence of OECD welfare states: a conditional approach’, Journal of European Social Policy, 21: 2, 120–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snijders, T. A. B. and Bosker, R. J. (2011), Multilevel Analysis: An Introduction to Basic and Advanced Multilevel Modelling, London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Snowdon, C. (2010), The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left's New Theory of Everything, London: Democracy Institute.Google Scholar
Stack, S. and Eshleman, J. R. (1998), ‘Marital status and happiness: a 17-nation study’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 60: 2, 527–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J. (2008), ‘Economic growth and subjective well-being: reassessing the Easterlin paradox’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring: 1–102.Google Scholar
Stiglitz, J., Sen, A. and Fitoussi, J.-P. (2010), MIS-Measuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up (The Report of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress), New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Svallfors, S. (2011), ‘A bedrock of support? Trends in welfare state attitudes in Sweden, 1981–2010’, Social Policy and Administration, 45: 7, 806–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor-Gooby, P. (2011a), ‘Does risk society erode welfare state solidarity?’, Policy and Politics, 39: 2, 147–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor-Gooby, P. (2011b), ‘Opportunity and solidarity’, Journal of Social Policy, 40: 3, 453–70.Google Scholar
Taylor-Gooby, P. and Stoker, G. (2011), ‘The coalition programme: a new vision for Britain or politics as usual?’, The Political Quarterly, 82: 1, 4–15.Google Scholar
Titmuss, R. M. (1958), Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Veenhoven, R. (1993), Happiness in Nations, Subjective Appreciation of Life in 56 Nations 1946–1992, Rotterdam, Netherlands: Erasmus University.Google Scholar
Veenhoven, R. (2000), ‘Well-being in the welfare state: level not higher, distribution not more equitable’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 2: 1, 91–125.Google Scholar
Welzel, C. and Inglehart, R. (2010), ‘Agency, values, and well-being: a human development model’, Social Indicators Research, 97: 1, 43–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2010), The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, London: Penguin.Google Scholar
World Values Survey (2009), World Values Survey 1981–2008, Madrid: World Values Survey Association, www.worldvaluessurvey.org.Google Scholar
Yeates, N., Haux, T., Jawad, R. and Kilkey, M. (2011), In Defence of Welfare: The Impacts of the Spending Review, Social Policy Association, http://www.social-policy.org.uk/downloads/idow.pdf.Google Scholar