The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
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The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism traces how individuals fare over time in each of the three types of welfare state. Through a unique analysis of panel data from Germany, the Netherlands and the US, tracking individuals’ socio-economic fate over fully ten years, Goodin, Headey, MuVels and Dirven explore issues of economic growth and eYciency, of poverty and inequality, of social integration, stability and autonomy. It is common to talkof the inevitability of trade-o Vs between these goals, but in this bookthe authors contend that the social demo- cratic welfare regime, represented here by the Netherlands, equals or exceeds the performance of the corporatist German regime and the liberal US regime across all these social and economic objectives. They thus argue that, whatever one’s priorities, the social democratic welfare regime is the best choice for realizing them. Robert E. Goodin is Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. He is the editor of The Journal of Political Philosophy, and of the Cambridge University Press series Theories of Institutional Design. His books include Political Theory and Public Policy (1982), Not Only the Poor (with Julian Le Grand, et al., 1987), Reasons for Welfare (1988) and Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility (with David Schmitz, 1998). Bruce Headey is Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of various articles and books on housing, well-being and income dynamics. His publications include Housing Policy in the Developed Economy (1978) and Understanding Happiness: A Theory of Subjective Well-Being (with Alex Wearing, 1992). Ruud Muffels is Research Professor of Labour Market and Social Security at Tilburg University, and Research Director of the Tilburg Institute of Social Security Research. His workon the labour market, poverty and welfare states includes Welfare Economic EVects of Social Security (1993), and several articles and bookchapters. Henk-Jan Dirven is project manager at the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Netherlands. He has published journal articles on income poverty and relative deprivation. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Salzburg, on 07 Sep 2018 at 06:39:34, subject to the Cambridge Core termsCambridge of use, available Books at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Online © Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490927 Press, 2009 MMMM Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Salzburg, on 07 Sep 2018 at 06:39:34, subject to the Cambridge Core termsCambridge of use, available Books at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Online © Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490927 Press, 2009 The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism Robert E. Goodin, Bruce Headey, Ruud MuVels and Henk-Jan Dirven Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Salzburg, on 07 Sep 2018 at 06:39:34, subject to the Cambridge Core termsCambridge of use, available Books at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Online © Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490927 Press, 2009 The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Robert E. Goodin, Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels and Henk-Jan Dirven 2004 First published in printed format 1999 ISBN 978-0-511-49092-7 OCeISBN ISBN 0-521-59386-7 hardback ISBN 0-521-59639-4 paperback Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Salzburg, on 07 Sep 2018 at 06:39:34, subject to the Cambridge Core termsCambridge of use, available Books at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Online © Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490927 Press, 2009 Contents Prefacepagevii Acknowledgmentsviii 1Introduction1 Part I: Setting the scene 2Reasonsforwelfare21 3Alternativeinstitutionaldesigns37 4Nationalembodiments56 5Backgroundexpectations87 6Testingthetheorieswithpanels98 Part II: One standard of success: external moral criteria 7PromotingeYciency125 8Reducingpoverty152 9Promotingequality173 10Promotingintegration187 11Promotingstability197 12Promotingautonomy211 Part III: Another standard of success: internal institutional criteria 13TheUnitedStatesasaliberalwelfareregime240 14TheNetherlandsasasocialdemocraticwelfareregime246 v Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Salzburg, on 07 Sep 2018 at 06:39:33, subject to the Cambridge Core termsCambridge of use, available Books at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Online © Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490927 Press, 2009 vi Contents 15Germanyasacorporatistwelfareregime253 16Conclusions259 Appendixtables265 References317 Index345 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Salzburg, on 07 Sep 2018 at 06:39:33, subject to the Cambridge Core termsCambridge of use, available Books at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Online © Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490927 Press, 2009 Preface This bookrepresents an unusual collaboration between a philosopher, a political scientist, an economist and a sociologist. The preoccupation we share is with the central question, ‘What are the best institutional arrange- ments for promoting each of a variety of social, political and moral values which the welfare state has historically been supposed to serve?’ Investigating that in the way we have done was made possible, how- ever, only by the painstaking work of many others who have, over the past decade and more, conducted on-going socio-economic household panel studies in the three countries we study. We should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to their incalculable contribution to the social sciences generally. Our small study, purely parasitic upon their vast labours, merely serves as a sample of the treasure trove that waits to be discovered within those larger data sets. Others before us – in a distinguished line running from Richard Tit- muss to Gøsta Esping-Andersen – have theoretically and empirically elaborated the view that there are three distinct worlds of welfare capital- ism. It is our aim to use the evidence from those panel studies to help us discover what life is ‘really like’ in each of those three worlds. The panel data are by their nature limited to a few hundred pre-coded items bearing primarily on people’s socio-economic circumstances. Clearly, there are myriad aspects to life that cannot be captured by such cold statistics. While our analysis necessarily lacks the full ethnographic richness that the phrase ‘real life’ might imply, we hope it nonetheless captures an import- ant part of what welfare states are supposed to be about. Whatever else, welfare regimes are supposed to serve some clear socio-economic goals, and their success in so doing can indeed be measured through panel data in some interesting and surprising ways. vii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University Library Salzburg, on 07 Sep 2018 at 06:39:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490927.001Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 Acknowledgments Our Wrst and largest debt is to those who have conducted the panel studies upon which we draw. For willingness to share their data with us, and the scholarly community more generally, we are most grateful to: • the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, conducted by the Sur- vey Research Center at the University of Michigan under the direction of James N. Morgan; • the German Socio-Economic Panel, jointly by the Wissen- schaftszentrum, Berlin under the direction of President Wolfgang Zapf and the Deutsches Institut fu¨r Wirtschaftsfor- schung, with Gert G. Wagner heading its panel group; • the Dutch Socio-Economic Panel Survey, conducted by the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek(CBS). We should particularly like to thank Brian Galligan and David van Iterson, the Dutch Consul in Melbourne, for helpful interventions at a crucial stage in facilitating our collaboration. We should also record our gratitude for subventions from our home institutions in helping to Wnance the project: the Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University and the Collaborative Research Scheme of ANU’s Institute of Advanced Study; the Centre for Public Policy of the University of Melbourne; and the Workand Organization Research Centre (WORC) of the University of Tilburg. While new technology makes trans-oceanic collaboration more feasible than ever before, at crucial stages it remains essential actually to meet. The four of us met in Melbourne and Canberra in February 1996 to plan the project; the Wrst three authors met again in Canberra in May 1997 to advance it; and the Australian and Dutch sub-teams met together more often still, in pursuit of it. We are all grateful for the hospitality, from time to time, of each others’ home institutions. Bruce Headey also gratefully acknowledges the hospitality of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the WORC at the University of Tilburg, the Wissenschaftzentrum, Berlin, and the Deutsches Institut fu¨r Wirtschaftsforschung,