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

TY - JOUR

T1 - Do standard classifications still represent European Welfare typologies? Novel evidence from studies on health and social care

AU - Carrino, Ludovico

AU - Bertin, Giovanni

AU - Pantalone, Marta

N1 - Funding Information: Ludovico Carrino is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (grant number: ES/S01523X/1 , IN-CARE project). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the ESRC or King's College London. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/7

Y1 - 2021/7

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - classification

KW - health policy

KW - social policy

KW - public provision

KW - welfare regime

KW - public economics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108078776&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114086

DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114086

M3 - Article

SN - 0277-9536

VL - 281

JO - Social Science & Medicine

JF - Social Science & Medicine

M1 - 114086

ER -