Since the 1970s early exit from work has become a major challenge in modern welfare states. Governments, employers, and unions alike once thought of early retirement as a peaceful solution to the ...economic problems of mass unemployment and industrial restructuring. Today governments and international organizations advocate the postponement of retirement and an increase in activity among older workers. Comparing the USA, eight European countries, and Japan, this book demonstrates significant cross-national differences in early retirement across countries and over time. The study evaluates the impact of major variations in welfare regimes, production systems, and labor relations. It stresses the importance of the 'pull factor' of extensive welfare state provisions, particularly in Continental Europe; the 'push factor' of labor shedding strategies by firms, particularly in Anglo-American market economies; and the role of employers and worker representatives in negotiating retirement policies, particularly in coordinated market economies. Over the last three decades, early retirement has become a popular social policy and employment practice in the workplace, adding to the fiscal crises and employment problems of today's welfare states. Attempts to reverse early retirement policies have led to major reform debates. Unilateral government policies to cut back on social benefits have not had the expected employment results due to resistance from employers, workers, and their organizations. Successful reforms require the cooperation of both sides. This study provides comprehensive empirical analysis and a balanced approach to studying both the pull and the push factors affecting early exit from work needed to understand the development of early retirement regimes. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience//toc.html
While the sustainability of pension systems facing demographic ageing has been widely discussed, the adequacy of retirement income has often been neglected in current debate. However, considerable ...poverty and income inequality in old age exists across Europe. Using recent EU‐SILC data (2017/18), the comparative analysis of poverty rates and income inequality in old age shows important cross‐national variations that need to be seen in context of market‐related inequalities but also the specific pension system. Beveridge basic security is not always capable of effectively reducing poverty despite the explicit goal to do so. In addition, private funded pensions may generate social inequality. Some contributory Bismarckian systems are better suited to reduce poverty, but given their focus on status maintenance also reproduce inequality. Poverty rates are low due to encompassing basic pensions in Dutch and some Nordic multipillar systems and in core Central and Eastern European countries. Bismarckian pensions such as in Germany are generating some inequality and medium level of poverty, while France and some Southern European countries perform better on poverty but reproduce larger inequalities. Beveridge systems such as in the United Kingdom and Switzerland with rather meagre basic multipillar systems have relatively medium to high poverty risks. In addition, the Baltic countries and new EU member states in the periphery have the highest poverty rates across Europe. The analysis shows that the minimum income provision of public pension systems matters most for poverty risks, while the overall pension architecture has an impact on reproducing inequality in old age acquired during working life.
The ongoing privatization of pensions - the shift from state to private responsibility for old age retirement income - raises fundamental issues of social and participatory rights. The recent ...financial market crisis makes the problematic nature of funded private pensions that fall short of expected returns dramatically clear. What have been the experiences in developed multipillar systems? What can be learned for those pensions systems currently under reform? This edited book compares the varieties of pension governance in ten European countries. Contrasting the experience of developed multipillar systems such as Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland with the recent shift toward private occupational and personal pensions in Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. The country chapters investigate how and why old age income responsibilities are being shifted to employers, unions, and individuals. They describe the changing public and private pension mix, and describe the particular features of the private occupational and personal pensions. In particular this book discusses four major questions: who is covered, what kind of benefits, who pays, and who governs? Three comparative analyses provide an additional value, describing the long-term institutional change from public to multipillar pension systems, the variations in regulation and governance of private pensions, and the consequences for income inequality in old age. This book combines the benefits of a reference work - ten up-to-date country studies of major pension systems in Europe - with three cross-national comparative empirical analyses that provide comprehensive information on important aspects of the reform development, societal governance, and social outcomes of pension systems. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/9780199586028/toc.html Contributors to this volume - Karen Anderson, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Giuliano Bonoli, Professor at Institut de hautes etudes en administration publique (IDHEAP) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Paul Bridgen, Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. Johan De Deken, Lecturer at Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam , the Netherlands. Bernhard Ebbinghaus, Professor of Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, and Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim, Germany. Jorgen Goul Andersen, Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Mareike Gronwald, Researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim, Germany. Silja Hausermann, Researcher and Lecturer (Oberassistentin) at the Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland. Matteo Jessoula, Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Political Studies, University of Milan, Italy. Olli Kangas, Professor and Head of the Research Department of the Social Insurance Institution (KELA) in Helsinki, Finland. Gabriella Sjogren Lindquist, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Stockholm and Deputy Director of the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) ) in Stockholm, Sweden. Paivi Luna, Research and Development Manager at the Federation of Finnish Financial Services in Helsinki, Finland. Traute Meyer, Reader at the School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. Marek Naczyk, DPhil candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Jorg Neugschwender, Researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) and PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences (GESS), University of Mannheim, Germany. Bruno Palier, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Political Research (CEVIPOF), Sciences Po, Paris, France. Eskil Wadensjo, Professor of Economics at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) in Stockholm, Sweden. Tobias Wiss, Researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim, Germany.
Recent reforms have responded to demographic ageing and fiscal challenges by shifting toward the multipillarisation of pensions to achieve financial sustainability. Reforms towards privatization and ...marketization of retirement income provision occurred in Britain and Germany with different pension system legacies. While public opinion supports largely the status quo, the stakeholders, in particular, organized capital and labour, have evolved in their positions towards pension reforms. The analysis seeks to draw out how organized interests have sought to influence mulitipillarisation but also adapted their strategies in the context of increasing financialisation in the two political economies. The position of trade unions, employers' associations, social advocacy groups and the finance sector has increasingly embraced multipillarisation, earlier and more so in Britain than in Germany. A reversal of pension financialisation seems no longer possible but the inequalities and uncertainties need to be addressed in order to make multipillarisation politically sustainable.
In response to the demographic challenges and fiscal constraints, many European welfare states have moved toward the privatization and marketization of pensions in order to improve their financial ...sustainability. The privatization of retirement income responsibility has led to a shift from dominantly public pensions to a multi‐pillar architecture with growing private pillars composed of personal, firm‐based, or collectively negotiated pension arrangements. At the same time, marketization has led to the introduction and expansion of prefunded pension savings based on financial investments as well as stronger reliance of market‐logic principles in the remaining public pay‐as‐you‐go (PAYG) pensions. However, there are also important cross‐national variations in the speed, scope, and structural outcome of the privatization and marketization of European pension systems. Liberal market economies, but also some coordinated market economies (the Netherlands and Switzerland) as well as the Nordic countries have embraced multi‐pillar strategies earlier and more widely, while the Bismarckian pensions systems and the post‐socialist transition countries of Eastern Europe have been belated converts. The recent financial market and economic crisis, however, indicates that the double transformation may entail short‐term problems and long‐term uncertainties about the social and political sustainability of these privatized and marketized multi‐pillar strategies.
In response to COVID-19, governments worldwide are implementing public health and social measures (PHSM) that substantially impact many areas beyond public health. The new field of PHSM data science ...collects, structures, and disseminates data on PHSM; here, we report the main achievements, challenges, and focus areas of this novel field of research.
Europe has been faced with multiple challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the problem of how to secure jobs and earnings. In our comparative analysis, we explore to what degree European ...welfare states were capable of responding to this crisis by stabilising employment and workers’ incomes. While short-time work was a policy tool already partly used in the 2008/2009 Great Recession, job retention policies were further expanded or newly introduced across Europe in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic. However, cross-national variations persist in the way in which these schemes were designed and implemented across European welfare states, aiming more or less to hoard labour and thereby avoid mass dismissals throughout the employment crisis. We distinguish between business support and labour support logics in explaining the variation in job retention policies across Europe. Our finding is that Continental, Mediterranean and liberal welfare states did more to foster labour hoarding using short-time work than Nordic or Central and Eastern European countries.
Abstract
This comparative study analyzes the impact of the Great Recession on household non-employment across Europe since 2008. We use the EU-SILC (2007–2014) for a shift-share analysis that ...decomposes annual variations in household non-employment in 30 European countries. Investigating whether job loss is absorbed by or accumulated in households, we break down non-employment variations into changes in individual non-employment, household compositions and polarization. We find that household joblessness increased since 2008, especially in crisis-ridden countries. There is no evidence for the widespread absorption of individual non-employment in families or multi-person households. Instead, household dynamics and unequal distribution of non-employment lead to further risk accumulation within households during the crisis. Surprisingly, this pattern occurs in those crisis-ridden countries known for their traditional household structures and less accommodating welfare systems, which have relied thus far on families to absorb employment risks. The Great Recession has aggravated household disparities in joblessness in Europe.
Recent reform efforts of advanced welfare states have attempted to reverse trends in early retirement and increase the statutory retirement age. This paradigm shift often occurred against the protest ...of unions, firms and their employees. As a consequence of expanding welfare states and as response to economic challenges since the 1970s early exit from work has become a widespread practice. Early retirement has been part of Continental Europe’s welfare without work problem, while the Scandinavian welfare states, the Anglophone liberal economies and the Japanese welfare society were able to maintain higher levels of employment for older workers. Since the 1990s, an international consensus to reverse early exit from work emerged among international organisations and national policy experts. Based on a comparative historical analysis of selected OECD countries, this study analyses the cross-national variations in the institutionalisation of early exit regimes and its recent reversal using macro-indictors on early exit trends and stylised information on institutional arrangements. Comparing the interaction of social policy and economic institutions, it reviews the cross-national differences in welfare state “pull” and economic “push” factors that have contributed to early exit from work and discusses the likely impact of welfare retrenchment and assesses the importance of “retention” factors such as activation policies for decreasing early exit from work.
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