IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/socinc/v8y2020i1p103-113.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Welfare State as Universal Social Security: A Global Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Kerem Gabriel Öktem

    (Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany)

Abstract

Over the past decades, the geography of comparative welfare state research has transformed. Whereas scholars used to focus on a limited number of advanced industrialised democracies, they now increasingly study developments in Europe’s periphery, East Asia, and Latin America. So, does this mean that the welfare state has spread around the world? To answer this question, we analyse different ways to measure welfare states and map their results. With the help of International Labour Organization and International Monetary Fund data, we explore measurements based on social expenditures, social rights, and social security legislations and show that each of them faces serious limitations in a global analysis of welfare states. For some measurements, we simply lack global data. For others, we risk misclassifying the extent and quality of some social protection systems. Finally, we present a measurement that is grounded in the idea that the welfare state is essentially about universalism. Relying on a conceptualisation of the welfare state as collective responsibility for the wellbeing of the entire population, we use universal social security as a yardstick. We measure this conceptualization through health and pension coverage and show that a growing number of countries have become welfare states by this definition. Yet, it is possible that at least some of these cases offer only basic levels of protection, we caution.

Suggested Citation

  • Kerem Gabriel Öktem, 2020. "The Welfare State as Universal Social Security: A Global Analysis," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 103-113.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v8:y:2020:i:1:p:103-113
    DOI: 10.17645/si.v8i1.2509
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/2509
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/si.v8i1.2509?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wood, Geof & Gough, Ian, 2006. "A Comparative Welfare Regime Approach to Global Social Policy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1696-1712, October.
    2. Martínez Franzoni,Juliana & Sánchez-Ancochea,Diego, 2016. "The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107125414, January.
    3. Rudra,Nita, 2008. "Globalization and the Race to the Bottom in Developing Countries," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521715034, January.
    4. Joakim Palme & Walter Korpi, 1998. "The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality and Poverty in the Western Countries," LIS Working papers 174, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    5. Brady, David & Bostic, Amie, 2015. "Paradoxes of Social Policy: Welfare Transfers, Relative Poverty, and Redistribution Preferences," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 80(2), pages 268-298.
    6. Rudra,Nita, 2008. "Globalization and the Race to the Bottom in Developing Countries," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521886987, January.
    7. Chris Pierson, 2004. "’Late Industrializers’ and the Development of the Welfare State," Social Policy in a Development Context, in: Thandika Mkandawire (ed.), Social Policy in a Development Context, chapter 10, pages 215-245, Palgrave Macmillan.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Monica Budowski & Daniel Künzler, 2020. "Universalism in Social Policies: A Multidimensional Concept, Policy Idea or Process," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 86-89.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kerem Gabriel Öktem, 2020. "The Welfare State as Universal Social Security: A Global Analysis," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 103-113.
    2. Schmitt, Carina, 2015. "Social Security Development and the Colonial Legacy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 332-342.
    3. Maszczyk Piotr, 2020. "The comparative empirical analysis of the social protection system in selected Central and Eastern European countries: Emerging models of capitalism," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 56(2), pages 159-175, June.
    4. Xabier Garcia-Fuente, 2021. "The Paradox of Redistribution in Time. Social Spending in 53 Countries, 1967-2018," LIS Working papers 815, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    5. Bruch, Sarah K. & van der Naald, Joseph & Gornick, Janet C., 2022. "Poverty Reduction through Federal and State Policy Mechanisms: Variation Over Time and Across the U.S. States," SocArXiv jz5xp, Center for Open Science.
    6. Elvire Guillaud & Matthew Olckers & Michaël Zemmour, 2020. "Four Levers of Redistribution: The Impact of Tax and Transfer Systems on Inequality Reduction," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(2), pages 444-466, June.
    7. Michaël Zemmour, 2015. "Economie politique du financement progressif de la protection sociale," Working Papers hal-01205217, HAL.
    8. Ben Spies-Butcher & Ben Phillips & Troy Henderson, 2020. "Between universalism and targeting: Exploring policy pathways for an Australian Basic Income," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 31(4), pages 502-523, December.
    9. Daoud, Adel & Johansson, Fredrik, 2019. "Estimating Treatment Heterogeneity of International Monetary Fund Programs on Child Poverty with Generalized Random Forest," SocArXiv awfjt, Center for Open Science.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4596cgacdn8svqf2eog4tv7b2i is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Stephan Kaplan, 2016. "partisan Technocratic Cycles in Latin America," Working Papers 2016-28, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    12. Nils Christian Hoffmann & Juelin Yin & Stefan Hoffmann, 2020. "Chain of Blame: A Multi-country Study of Consumer Reactions Towards Supplier Hypocrisy in Global Supply Chains," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 247-286, April.
    13. Paula Blomqvist & Joakim Palme, 2020. "Universalism in Welfare Policy: The Swedish Case beyond 1990," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 114-123.
    14. Raj M. Desai & Nita Rudra, 2016. "Trade, poverty, and social protection in developing countries," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-139, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Oyvat, Cem, 2016. "Agrarian Structures, Urbanization, and Inequality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 207-230.
    16. Md. Masud‐All‐Kamal & Choyon Kumar Saha, 2014. "Targeting Social Policy and Poverty Reduction: The Case of Social Safety Nets in Bangladesh," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(2), pages 195-211, June.
    17. Naoki Akaeda, 2023. "Does Social Policy Crowd Out or Crowd In Social Trust? The Perspectives of Transfer Share, Low-Income Targeting, and Universalism," LIS Working papers 870, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    18. Paula Blomqvist & Joakim Palme, 2020. "Universalism in Welfare Policy: The Swedish Case beyond 1990," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 114-123.
    19. Baker, Andy & Velasco-Guachalla, Vania Ximena, 2018. "Is the Informal Sector Politically Different? (Null) Answers from Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 170-182.
    20. Harish, Nikki & Plouffe, Michael, 2018. "The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment to Developing Countries," OSF Preprints chzpq, Center for Open Science.
    21. Liberati, P., 2024. "Are European Health Models Still Different?," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2441, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v8:y:2020:i:1:p:103-113. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.