Ke-07-16-165-En-N
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Assessing Social Investment Synergies (ASIS) Hemerijck, A.; Burgoon, B.; Di Pietro, A.; Vydra, S. DOI 10.2767/282207 Publication date 2016 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Hemerijck, A., Burgoon, B., Di Pietro, A., & Vydra, S. (2016). Assessing Social Investment Synergies (ASIS). Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2767/282207 General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:25 Sep 2021 Assessing Social Investment Synergies (ASIS) Written by Anton Hemerijck, Brian Burgoon, Alessandra Di Pietro, and Simon Vydra October – 2016 Social Europe EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Directorate Social Affairs Unit C1 - Social investment Strategy European Commission B-1049 Brussels Assessing Social Investment Synergies Assessing Social Investment Synergies (ASIS) Anton Hemerijck1 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) [email protected] Brian Burgoon University of Amsterdam [email protected] Alessandra di Pietro Erasmus University [email protected] Simon Vydra Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [email protected] 1 The ASIS project was commissioned as a part of an analytical effort to further understand the 'returns' of social investment following the adoption of the 2013 Social Investment Package. As foreseen in the contract, a peer review took place on 7 January 2016 in Brussels on the Commission premises. Comments by the peer reviewers Christian Bodewig (World Bank), Moira Nelson (Lund University), and Gerlinde Verbist (University of Antwerp) are gratefully acknowledged, alongside suggestions made by Evelyn Astor, Nick Costello and Mark Vothknecht (European Commission) and earlier advice from Lieve Fransen (European Policy Centre), Maurizio Ferrera (University of Milan), Stefano Sacchi (University of Milan), Frank Vandenbroucke (University of Amsterdam) and Jonathan Zeitlin (University of Amsterdam). i Assessing Social Investment Synergies Europe Direct is a service to help you find answers to your questions about the European Union. Freephone number (*): 00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11 (*) The information given is free, as are most calls (though some operators, phone boxes or hotels may charge you). LEGAL NOTICE This document has been prepared for the European Commission however it reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. This publication has received financial support from the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation "EaSI" (2014-2020). For further information please consult: http://ec.europa.eu/social/easi More information on the European Union is available on the Internet: http://www.europa.eu Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2016 ISBN: 978-92-79-64567-9 doi: 10.2767/282207 © European Union, 2016 Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged. ii Assessing Social Investment Synergies Executive summary The concept of social investment in social policy design has gained progressive traction in scholarly debates and policy-making environments from the mid-1990s onwards. Building on the pioneering work of the Dutch Presidency of the European Union (EU) in 1997, calling attention to ‘social policy as a productive factor’, social investment ideas became foundational for the Lisbon Agenda, launched in 2000, with the ambition to turn Europe into the ‘most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth and more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (European Council, 2000). It is generally recognized that European welfare states have, with varying degrees of success, upgraded their social investment impetus the most in the decade before the onslaught of the global financial crisis (Bonoli, 2013; Hemerijck, 2013). Alongside retrenchments, there have been deliberate attempts to rebuild social programs and institutions and thereby accommodate welfare policy repertoires to the new economic and social realities of the knowledge-based economy in times of adverse demography. The most recent assertive embrace of social investment came with the launch of the Social Investment Package for Growth and Social Cohesion (henceforth SIP), by the European Commission in February 2013, urging EU Member States to advance post-crisis welfare reform strategies that help ‘prepare’ individuals, families and societies to respond to the new risks of a competitive knowledge economy, rather than pursue policies that simply ‘repair’ damages after moments of economic or personal crisis (EC, 2013). Like any notion of ‘investment’, the concept of social investment connotes the possibility of measurable ‘returns on investment’ or a social investment ‘discount rate’. Fundamental to social investment returns is the importance of composite or synergy effects of complementary policy interventions, supported by social security safety nets under variegated economic and socio-demographic conditions, and relating to diverse aspects of wellbeing: human-capital development, income maintenance and protection, and the facilitation of gendered life course and labour market transitions. Moreover, optimal gains in social investment synergy effect require the effective management of ‘institutional complementarities’ between social protection, human capital development, and employment regulation. Any measurement of social investment’s ‘returns’, therefore, requires attention to these complexities. Assessing Social Investment Synergies (ASIS) does precisely that, by developing an evidence-based methodology for analysing the financial, economic and societal returns of social investment policies. This involves setting up the tools to measure the implications of the social-investment approach to social policy, as compared to traditional compensatory social protection arrangements. This involves studying effects of the provision of ‘capacitating’ policies such as education and training, active labour market policy, and child and elder care, which equip and assist people to surmount the increasingly uncertain—and thus less insurable in an actuarial sense —hazards of the labour market and the life course. The focus of this study is to explore in detail the positive and negative effects of such social-investment-related social policies in terms of economic wellbeing broadly understood in term of employment, GDP growth, labour productivity, gender equality, and (relative) poverty. Although social investment is often positively related to economic growth, social investment policy innovation is certainly not singularly related to higher levels of economic growth. There is wide spectrum of (complementary) policy interventions related to economic growth, ranging from technological progress, trade iii Assessing Social Investment Synergies liberalization, the deepening of the single market, higher public investments by EU member state with large current account surpluses, and so on and so forth. Social investment is no ‘growth miracle’. Over the past decade both policymakers and expert academics have started to rethink the interaction between economic progress and social policy: from ‘trade-offs’ and ‘trilemmas’ to Pareto-optimal ‘mutual reinforcements’ and wellbeing synergies in even Rawlsean terms of benefiting the worst off (Esping-Andersen, 1999, 2008; Hemerijck, 2013; 2014; 2015). Central to the notion of social investment is that the economic sustainability of the welfare state hinges on the number and productivity of future taxpayers. With a deliberate orientation towards ‘early identification’, social investment policy serves actively to mobilize the productive potential of citizens in order to mitigate new social risks, such as atypical employment, long-term unemployment, working poverty, family instability and lack of opportunities for labour market participation resulting from care obligations or obsolete skills. In order to succeed in the ‘knowledge economy’, human capital improvement through education and training, social services, and benefits, to help make the most efficient use of available human capital and avoid skill depletion, is paramount, especially in ageing European societies. Alongside demographic ageing, the social investment argument is very much rooted in the changing role of women over the past quarter century. As female participation is critical to sustainable welfare states in ageing societies and parenting crucial to child development, policymakers have