The great recession and welfare state reform. Is retrenchment really the only game left in town?

Autor/inn/en	Kersbergen, Kees van; Vis, Barbara; Hemerijck, Anton
Titel	The great recession and welfare state reform. Is retrenchment really the only game left in town? Gefälligkeitsübersetzung: Die große Rezession und Wohlfahrtsstaatsreform. Sind Ausgabenkürzungen die einzige Möglichkeit?
Quelle	In: Social policy & administration, 48 (2014) 7, S. 883-904 PDF als Volltext Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0037-7643; 0144-5596; 1467-9515
DOI	10.1111/spol.12063
Schlagwörter	Arbeitslosengeld; Arbeitsmarktpolitik; Bildungspolitik; Dänemark; Deutschland; Familienpolitik; Großbritannien; Kostensenkung; Niederlande; Reformpolitik; Sozialhilfe; Sozialpolitik; Steuerpolitik; Bildungspolitik; Sozialabbau; Wohlfahrtsstaat; Internationaler Vergleich; Rezession; Sozialinvestition; Rentenpolitik; Kinderbetreuung; Sparpolitik; Familienpolitik; Sozialhilfe; Kinderbetreuung; Reformpolitik; Sozialabbau; Sozialinvestition; Sozialpolitik; Sparpolitik; Wohlfahrtsstaat; Kostensenkung; Rezession; Steuerpolitik; Arbeitslosengeld; Arbeitsmarktpolitik; Rentenpolitik; Internationaler Vergleich; Deutschland; Dänemark; Großbritannien; Niederlande
Abstract	By 2010, when the Greek sovereign debt crisis changed into an existential crisis of the euro, all developed democracies entered a phase in which they had to consolidate their budgets, typically implying a politics of austerity. The scholarly literature, as well as the popular press, suggests that - consequently - welfare retrenchment and cost containment became the only games left in town. In this article, we study the welfare state reform measures taken between 2010 and 2012 in four countries characteristic of mature welfare state regimes (liberal, UK; conservative, Germany; social democratic, Denmark; and hybrid, the Netherlands) to examine empirically whether austerity has indeed become the only item left on the policy menu. Our analysis reveals that retrenchment features prominently on the agenda everywhere, but nowhere by itself. While compensation for income loss is rare since 2010, this still happens. More unexpectedly, reforms in line with a social investment agenda (like expansion of child care or active labour market policies) are still being pursued in all our four cases. (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku).
Erfasst von	Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nürnberg
Update	2015/2