(No) country for old men? Intergenerational welfare distribution across welfare state regimes

PurposeThe article examines the interplay between welfare state regimes and the distribution of welfare between generations.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from 2017 for 24 European countries on six standard of living dimensions, the authors investigate the intergenerational welfare distribution in a two-stage procedure: (1) the authors compare the intergenerational welfare distribution across welfare state regimes using their existing typologies and find a moderate nexus. Therefore, (2) the authors employ clustering procedure to look for a new classification that would better reflect the cross-country variation in the intergenerational welfare division.FindingsThe authors find a complex relationship between the welfare state model and welfare distribution across generations and identify the policy patterns that shape it. Continental and liberal regimes are quite similar in these terms and favour the elderly generation. Social-democratic and CEE regimes seem to be a bit more balanced. COVID-19 pandemic will probably increase the intergenerational imbalance in terms of welfare distribution in favour of the elderly.Originality/valueIn contrast to the majority of previous studies, which employ inputs (social expenditures) or outputs (benefits, incomes), the authors use intergenerational balance indicators reflecting living conditions of a given generation as compared to the reference point defined as an average situation of all generations.

Socio-economic Governance in the EU

This paper focuses on the complexity of socio-economic governance in the European Union. We define socio-economic governance as the process of governing societies in a situation where no single actor can claim absolute dominance thus socio-economic governance is the outcome of the interaction between European Union institutions (European Union decision-makers) and member states (national policy-makers). Since the onset of the global financial crisis and the euro crisis a decade ago, social issues have become substantially prominent in EU governance and policy debate. Furthermore, the Covid-19 crisis brought again social issues to the fore. There is no dedicated social governance framework in the European Union but there are several mechanisms (strategies, initiatives and regulations) through which social governance is practiced. At the same time, the framework for European economic governance has substantially been strengthened as a consequence of the global financial crisis and the euro crisis and can be characterised by a matured but incomplete framework. On the one hand, this paper aims to collect and investigate all governance tools related to economic and social issues in the European Union, and on the other hand, this research examines the impacts of those governance tools on member states.