‘Social Investment’ or Back to ‘Familism’: The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Family and Care Policies in Italy and Spain

Abstract

Family policies have traditionally been weak in Southern Europe. In the last two decades,\ud however, and following a ‘catching up’ course, Spain has created new family programmes\ud and expanded existing ones. Meanwhile, the picture for Italy during the years preceding\ud the crisis is more of a ‘frozen landscape’. However, the diverging paths of the two countries\ud in terms of policy reform in the years preceding the crisis do not place them in\ud substantially different positions. The economic crisis and the austerity measures that\ud followed have aggravated the weaknesses of family and care policies in both countries

Policy Continuity and Change in Greek Social Policy in the Aftermath of the Sovereign Debt Crisis

“…At the same time, it should be noted that as this strategy has not been accompanied by a shift to a new setting (in essence a shift towards privatization), doubts are raised as to the ability of people to seek for complementary insurance through market mechanisms (cf. Leon and Pavolini ).…”

Politics of defamilialization: A comparison of Italy, Japan, Korea and Spain

“…Since the 1990s, governments attempted to retrench the pre-existing carer's allowance and divert the resources to build public service provisions for LTC. In 1997, for instance, the Onofri Commission recommended the introduction of a LTC system (León and Pavolini 2014). Of course, retrenchment of a popular non-means-tested cash benefit is always difficult Da Roit and Naldini, 2010;Da Roit and Sabatinelli; Unlike in Japan, the highly universal nature of the Italian health care system did not give rise to a constellation of stakeholders that would be the government's ally in retrenchment and recalibration.…”

Social services, welfare states and places: an overview

“…It was characterised by a distinct mix of features: 13 relatively recent democratisation and industrialisation, weak state traditions (with relatively inefficient -often clientelistic -bureaucracies), a 'Bismarckian' model of social insurance, a historically residual role of the state in social assistance and only recent public engagement in developing modern welfare provisions (Ferrera, 1996). In fact, countries in this family are 'latecomers' in what concerns the public provision of universalistic social services, many of which were introduced during the neo-liberal phase in the 1980s and 1990s, albeit often underfunded (Da Roit and Sabatinelli, 2013;León and Pavolini, 2014;Petmesidou and Guillén, 2014). But the most distinctive feature of the model was the strong reliance on the family as main provider of care services (Leitner, 2003).…”