Is employment of social risk groups the key to sustaining the European welfare regimes?

The European welfare regimes face two sets of challenges. One internal, specific for the welfare state itself, and the other external, imposed by changing economic, political and economics conditions. The first challenge lies in the growing gap between the rigid welfare state design and flexible social demands. Due to their unpredictable nature, the second challenge has received more attention in comparative welfare state studies. The core of the actual welfare state crisis is allocated in the economic problems that can be synthesised as the unemployment problem. Following this logic, in this paper we promote the thesis that employment of social risk groups is the key for sustaining the European welfare regimes. When the level of employment of poverty risk groups is high and the level of unemployment is low, more people contribute to the welfare state and the less draw on it, making any given level of redistribution more sustainable. Along with theoretical consideration, we use the balanced panel of 14 EU countries from 1995 to 2006 in order to provide some evidences that could support this thesis empirically.