IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/276.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring Welfare State Performance: Three or Two Worlds of Welfare Capitalism?

Author

Listed:
  • Cok Vrooman
  • Paul de Beer
  • Jean Marie Wildeboer Schut

Abstract

This paper examines the well-known classification of welfare regimes by Esping- Andersen (1990). First, the institutional characteristics of eleven welfare states are examined by means of a principal components analysis. This analysis confirms the existence of three types of welfare state, viz. the liberal welfare state (USA, Australia, United Kingdom and Canada), the social-democratic welfare state (Sweden, Denmark, Norway) and the corporatist welfare state (Germany, Belgium, France). The Netherlands, however, turns out to be a hybrid kind of welfare state, somewhere in between the social democratic and the corporatist welfare states. Next, we examine whether these three types of welfare state correspond to a threefold classification in terms of the traditional protective functions of the welfare state. By using LIS-data from the first half of the 1990s we compare eleven welfare states with respect to the degree of income leveling by the social security and tax system, the rate of inequality of disposable household incomes, the level of social welfare (interpreted as a combination of income level and income equality) and the poverty rate. We find that there is indeed a clear dividing line between the liberal welfare states on the one hand and the social-democratic and corporatist welfare states on the other. The liberal welfare states perform consistently worse on the indicators for income leveling, income (in)equality and poverty, but not with respect to the level of social welfare. There is however no consistent difference in performance between the social-democratic countries and the corporatist countries. There rather seems to be a combined group of continental European countries, existing of both social-democratic and corporatist welfare states and the hybrid Netherlands, that achieve roughly comparable results in terms of income protection by using quite different institutions. Hence, although there are indeed three types of welfare state as far as institutional arrangements are concerned, it is better to discern only two types of welfare state with respect to income (re)distribution, social welfare en poverty.

Suggested Citation

  • Cok Vrooman & Paul de Beer & Jean Marie Wildeboer Schut, 2001. "Measuring Welfare State Performance: Three or Two Worlds of Welfare Capitalism?," LIS Working papers 276, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:276
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/276.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Eve Caroli & Philippe Aghion, 1999. "Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1615-1660, December.
    2. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10091 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Esping-Andersen, Gosta, 1999. "Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198742005.
    4. Perotti, Roberto, 1996. "Growth, Income Distribution, and Democracy: What the Data Say," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 149-187, June.
    5. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    6. A. B. Atkinson, 1999. "The Economic Consequences of Rolling Back the Welfare State," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262011719, December.
    7. Buhmann, Brigitte, et al, 1988. "Equivalence Scales, Well-Being, Inequality, and Poverty: Sensitivity Estimates across Ten Countries Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 34(2), pages 115-142, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cok Vrooman, 2009. "Poverty and Institutional Regimes A Generalised Budget Approach in 11 Countries," LIS Working papers 518, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Robin Samuel & Andreas Hadjar, 2016. "How Welfare-State Regimes Shape Subjective Well-Being Across Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 129(2), pages 565-587, November.
    3. Bjarne Jansson & Jahangir Khan, 2006. "Redistributive Outcome of Sickness Insurance - An Empirical Study of Social Insurance Institutions," LIS Working papers 442, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    4. Hans-Jürgen Burchardt & Nico Weinmann, 2012. "Social Inequality and Social Policy outside the OECD: A New Research Perspective on Latin America," ICDD Working Papers 5, University of Kassel, Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften (Social Sciences), Internatioanl Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Günther Rehme, 2007. "Education, Economic Growth and Measured Income Inequality," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(295), pages 493-514, August.
    2. Michael P. Keane & Eswar S. Prasad, 2002. "Inequality, Transfers, And Growth: New Evidence From The Economic Transition In Poland," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 324-341, May.
    3. Bourguignon, Francois, 2005. "The Effect of Economic Growth on Social Structures," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 27, pages 1701-1747, Elsevier.
    4. Christina Behrendt, 2000. "Holes in the Safety Net? Social Security and the Alleviation of Poverty in a Comparative Perspective," LIS Working papers 259, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    5. Martin Ravallion, 2013. "The Idea of Antipoverty Policy," NBER Working Papers 19210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. CROCI ANGELINI Elisabetta & D'AMBROSIO Conchita & FARINA Francesco, 2001. "Do Preferences in EU Member-States Support Fiscal Federalism?," IRISS Working Paper Series 2002-01, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.
    7. Rehme, Günther, 2002. "Education, Economic Growth and Personal Income Inequality Across (Rich) Countries," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 43476, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    8. Roman Arjona & Maxime Ladaique & Mark Pearson, 2001. "Growth, Inequality and Social Protection," OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers 51, OECD Publishing.
    9. Adelaide Duarte & Marta Simões, 2010. "Regional growth in Portugal: assessing the contribution of earnings and education inequality," GEMF Working Papers 2010-11, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    10. Ravallion, Martin, 2005. "Inequality is bad for the poor," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3677, The World Bank.
    11. Roberto Ezcurra, 2007. "Is Income Inequality Harmful for Regional Growth? Evidence from the European Union," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(10), pages 1953-1971, September.
    12. Shinhye Chang & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2018. "Causality Between Per Capita Real GDP and Income Inequality in the U.S.: Evidence from a Wavelet Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 269-289, January.
    13. Dixon, Peter B. & Rimmer, Maureen & McDonald, Daina & McDaniel, Christine A. & Balistreri, Edward J. & Johnson, Kyle & Wong, Eina V., 2002. "USAGE: Data and Parameters," Conference papers 331021, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    14. Cristiano Perugini & Gaetano Martino, 2008. "Income Inequality Within European Regions: Determinants And Effects On Growth," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(3), pages 373-406, September.
    15. Pedro Salas-Rojo & Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, 2022. "Inheritances and wealth inequality: a machine learning approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 27-51, March.
    16. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García‐Peñalosa, 2010. "Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(307), pages 413-450, July.
    17. Theodore Koutmeridis, 2013. "The Market for "Rough Diamonds": Information, Finance and Wage Inequality," CDMA Working Paper Series 201307, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis, revised 14 Oct 2013.
    18. Ricardo Fort, 2007. "Land inequality and economic growth: a dynamic panel data approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 37(2‐3), pages 159-165, September.
    19. Josef ZweimüLler, 2000. "Inequality, Redistribution, and Economic Growth," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 1-20, March.
    20. Dierk Herzer & Sebastian Vollmer, 2012. "Inequality and growth: evidence from panel cointegration," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(4), pages 489-503, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.