Welfare Performance in Southern Europe: Employment Crisis and Poverty Risk

Gutiérrez, Rodolfo

doi:10.1080/13608746.2014.948592

Cited by 26 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Additionally, we have approached the crisis from a more quantitative perspective, considering it a continuous phenomenon. For this purpose, we have tapped the crisis effects using the unemployment rate, the most characteristic recession indicator of the Spanish crisis (Gutiérrez, 2014), which moved from an average of about 8.5 per cent in 2007 to a maximum of 26 per cent in 2013. An additional reason to select the unemployment rate to track the crisis is that high rates of unemployment entail a greater share of the population at risk of poverty which in turn places demands for resources and social services on the public administration (including local authorities).…”

Section: Context Research Design and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of economic crises on participatory democracy

Alarcón

Galais

Fábregas

et al. 2019

Policy &Amp; Politics

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This paper examines the impact of economic conditions on participatory democracy. It analyses whether economic crises affect the types of proposals that emerge from local participatory processes and the fate of these proposals. Focusing on more than 500 proposals that emerged from 34 participatory processes in Spain between 2007 and 2011, our study covers a period which straddles the emergence of severe economic problems resulting from the global financial crisis. Applying four different but complementary analytical strategies, we find two types of effects. First, proposals made during the crisis period were less costly though more challenging. Second, local governments implemented a smaller proportion of the proposals that were put forward by the public. These findings suggest that external economic shocks reduce the ability of governments to respond to the demands of citizens, but that citizens also recalibrate their expectations in response to austerity.

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Section: Context Research Design and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of economic crises on participatory democracy

Alarcón

Galais

Fábregas

et al. 2019

Policy &Amp; Politics

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“…The policy reforms carried out during the 1980s and early 1990s may be interpreted as a path departure from the traditional insider‐only Corporatist social insurance model (Gutiérrez, 2014). Those reforms, however, did not respond to a clear and comprehensive reform plan to develop a strong means‐tested tier, but rather were the result of partial attempts to recalibrate the two main components of the Social security income maintenance system, that is, the pension and unemployment system.…”

Section: The Initial Path Departure: Income Maintenance Reforms 1980–mentioning

confidence: 99%

Out of the wilderness? The coming back of the debate on minimum income in Spain and the Great Recession

Aguilar‐Hendrickson

Durana

2020

Soc Policy Adm

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Southern European welfare states have developed relatively solid social insurance income maintenance programs, but have lacked effective means‐tested benefit systems to address poverty and protect outsiders. Spain and Portugal are usually considered the two first countries to depart from the traditional path with the creation of minimum income schemes between 1988 and 1995. In the Spanish case, minimum income programs were established at the regional level and are very heterogeneous despite their institutional stability. The limited extent of these programs in most Spanish regions must be put in the context of national means‐tested income support schemes in the fields of pensions and unemployment. The introduction of these programs in the 1980s was also a significant path departure. The combination of these programs has offered some income support to low income groups left unprotected by traditional insurance benefits, although in a patchy and limited way, especially as regards the working‐age population. The social effects of the Great Recession, especially in terms of long‐term unemployment, evictions and impoverishment, have reopened the debate on how to combat monetary poverty, which has been on the general election agenda since 2014–2015. Most regions have reformed their programs in different directions since 2008, under the contradictory pressures of growing demand and financial constraints. Such debate, however, has not been able yet to set a clear basis for a new development of anti‐poverty income support policy.

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“…Southern European countries have long been considered as stragglers in this respect (Ferrera, 1996, 2005b; Gough, 1996, 2001; Nelson, 2011; Saraceno, 2006). The lack of a minimum income was considered part of a more complex set of features (Gutiérrez, 2014) that included dualistic labour markets with low employment rates for women and the young, and welfare systems with low redistributive capacity, biased in favour of the elderly and against the young, and chronically unable to reduce poverty significantly. The key role of family as a service provider (and an income source integrator) completes this model (Ferrera, 1998; Mingione & Benassi, 2019).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This process has reduced the singularity of these countries in comparison to Continental welfare states, but it has developed in different ways in each country, more successfully in Spain and Portugal than in Italy and Greece (Gutiérrez, 2014; Lalioti, 2015). Figure 1 shows the very different weight of contributory and means‐tested benefits for the working‐age population in the four countries.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%