IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/sbgwpe/2012_004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Convergence of Welfare State Indicators in Europe: Evidence from Panel Data

Author

Listed:
  • Paetzold, Jörg

    (University of Salzburg)

Abstract

This paper investigates whether there is a convergence in welfare state policies among the old EU member states. To identify such trends, we rely on pension and unemployment net replacement rates as well as on public social expenditures. Empirically, we use a sample of 14 economies (EU-15 excl. Lux.) between 1980 and 2005. The empirical findings reveal a presence of a convergence process, driven by strong catch-up of social protection levels in the Southern member states. Furthermore, convergence in replacement rates is substantially less pronounced than using spending data.

Suggested Citation

  • Paetzold, Jörg, 2012. "The Convergence of Welfare State Indicators in Europe: Evidence from Panel Data," Working Papers in Economics 2012-4, University of Salzburg.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:sbgwpe:2012_004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uni-salzburg.at/fileadmin/oracle_file_imports/1771238.PDF
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 2002. "EU Enlargement and the Future of the Welfare State," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(1), pages 104-115, February.
    2. Hans–Werner Sinn, 2002. "EU Enlargement and the Future of the Welfare State," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(1), pages 104-115, February.
    3. Koen Caminada & Kees Goudswaard & Olaf Van Vliet, 2010. "Patterns of Welfare State Indicators in the EU: Is there Convergence?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 529-556, June.
    4. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2002. "The European Social Model: Coping with the challenges of diversity," MPIfG Working Paper 02/8, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    5. Castles, Francis G., 2004. "The Future of the Welfare State: Crisis Myths and Crisis Realities," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199273928, Decembrie.
    6. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(5), pages 997-1032, October.
    7. Beck, Nathaniel & Katz, Jonathan N., 1995. "What To Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(3), pages 634-647, September.
    8. Im, Kyung So & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol, 2003. "Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 53-74, July.
    9. Luisa Corrado & David A. Londo–o B. & Francesco S. Mennini & Giovanni Trovato, 2003. "The Welfare States in a United Europe," European Political Economy Review, European Political Economy Infrastructure Consortium, vol. 1(Spring), pages 40-55.
    10. Kittel, Bernhard & Winner, Hannes, 2002. "How reliable is pooled analysis in political economy? The globalization welfare state nexus revisited," MPIfG Discussion Paper 02/3, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    11. Christopher F Baum, 2001. "Residual diagnostics for cross-section time series regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 1(1), pages 101-104, November.
    12. Atkinson,Anthony Barnes, 1996. "Incomes and the Welfare State," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521557962.
    13. Nicole Attia & Valérie Berenger, 2007. "Social Protection Convergence in the European Union: Impact of Maastricht Treaty," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 54(4), pages 469-487, December.
    14. Korpi, Walter & Palme, Joakim, 2003. "New Politics and Class Politics in the Context of Austerity and Globalization: Welfare State Regress in 18 Countries, 1975–95," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(3), pages 425-446, August.
    15. repec:ces:ifodic:v:4:y:2006:i:4:p:14567432 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. James P. Allan & Lyle Scruggs, 2004. "Political Partisanship and Welfare State Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(3), pages 496-512, July.
    17. Fritz W. Scharpf, 2002. "The European Social Model," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 645-670, November.
    18. William Baumol, 1996. "Children of performing arts, the economic dilemma: The climbing costs of health care and education," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 20(3), pages 183-206, September.
    19. Levin, Andrew & Lin, Chien-Fu & James Chu, Chia-Shang, 2002. "Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-24, May.
    20. Kittel, Bernhard & Obinger, Herbert, 2002. "Political parties, institutions, and the dynamics of social expenditure in times of austerity," MPIfG Discussion Paper 02/1, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    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. Benjamin Furlan & Harald Oberhofer & Hannes Winner, 2016. "A note on merger and acquisition evaluation," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 447-455.
    2. Bonasia, Mariangela & De Siano, Rita, 2019. "Financial crisis and the convergence of European welfare provision," MPRA Paper 97509, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Rathner, Sebastian, 2013. "The Relative Performance of Socially Responsible Investment Funds. New Evidence from Austria," Working Papers in Economics 2013-1, University of Salzburg.
    4. Athanasios Athanasenas & Xanthippi Chapsa & Athanasios Michailidis, 2015. "Investigating Social Protection Convergence in the EU-15: A Panel Data Analysis," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(2), pages 79-96.

    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. Bonasia, Mariangela & De Siano, Rita, 2019. "Financial crisis and the convergence of European welfare provision," MPRA Paper 97509, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Van Vliet, Olaf & Kaeding, Michael, 2007. "Globalisation, European Integration and Social Protection – Patterns of Change or Continuity?," MPRA Paper 20808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Koen Caminada & Kees Goudswaard & Olaf Van Vliet, 2010. "Patterns of Welfare State Indicators in the EU: Is there Convergence?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 529-556, June.
    4. Bruno Amable & Donatella Gatti & Elvire Guillaud, 2008. "How does Party Fractionalization convey Preferences for Redistribution in Parliamentary Democracies ?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00348878, HAL.
    5. Olaf van Vliet & Ferry Koster, 2011. "Europeanization and the political economy of active labour market policies," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(2), pages 217-239, June.
    6. Manuela Arcanjo, 2009. "The Reform of Unemployment Protection Insurance, 1993-2007: the Erosion of Legislated Rights in France, Germany, Portugal and Spain," Working Papers Department of Economics 2009/01, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    7. Brady, David & Lee, Hang Young, 2014. "The rise and fall of government spending in affluent democracies, 1971-2008," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 24(1), pages 56-79.
    8. Bruno Amable & Donatella Gatti & Jan Schumacher, 2006. "Welfare-State Retrenchment: The Partisan Effect Revisited," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 22(3), pages 426-444, Autumn.
    9. Niklas Potrafke, 2012. "Political cycles and economic performance in OECD countries: empirical evidence from 1951–2006," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 155-179, January.
    10. Cecilia Bruzelius & Constantin Reinprecht & Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, 2017. "Stratified Social Rights Limiting EU Citizenship," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(6), pages 1239-1253, November.
    11. Sarah Marchal & Ive Marx, 2015. "Stemming the tide. What have EU countries done to support low-wage workers in an era of downward wage pressure?," ImPRovE Working Papers 15/18, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    12. Wang, Jinxian & Van Vliet, Olaf & Goudswaard, Kees, 2015. "Social assistance benefits and European coordination," MPRA Paper 66147, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Potrafke, Niklas, 2010. "The growth of public health expenditures in OECD countries: Do government ideology and electoral motives matter?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 797-810, December.
    14. Elsässer, Lea & Rademacher, Inga & Schäfer, Armin, 2015. "Cracks in the foundation: Retrenchment in advanced welfare states," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 16(3), pages 4-16.
    15. Brady, David & Beckfield, Jason & Seeleib-Kaiser, Martin, 2004. "Economic Globalization and the Welfare State in Affluent Democracies, 1975-1998," Working papers of the ZeS 12/2004, University of Bremen, Centre for Social Policy Research (ZeS).
    16. Barbara ERMINI & Raffaella SANTOLINI, 2013. "Does globalization matter on fiscal decentralization of OECD?," Working Papers 390, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    17. Hans Pitlik, 2010. "Fiscal Governance and Government Investment in Europe since the 1990s," WIFO Working Papers 370, WIFO.
    18. Beramendi, Pablo, 2007. "Inequality and the Territorial Fragmentation of Solidarity," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(4), pages 783-820, October.
    19. Hans‐Werner Sinn & Wolfgang Ochel, 2003. "Social Union, Convergence and Migration," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(5), pages 869-896, December.
    20. Potrafke, Niklas, 2017. "Partisan politics: The empirical evidence from OECD panel studies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 712-750.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social protection; convergence; pension & unemployment replacement rates; Europeanization; welfare state;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ris:sbgwpe:2012_004. 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: Jörg Paetzold (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwsbgat.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.