Suchergebnisse

In the 1990s Sweden went through a deep economic recession accompanied by a massive increase in unemployment and a rapidly growing budget deficit. The crisis had large repercussions for the welfare of many citizens and it generated cutbacks in virtually all social policy programmes. This halted a welfare‐state expansion that had been going on for decades. It also caused great concern about the state of welfare of the nation. In 1999 the Swedish Government appointed a 'Welfare Commission', a team of academic researchers who were assigned the task of drawing up a balance sheet for the development of welfare in the 1990s. The Commission delivered its final report in October 2001. This article is a condensed account of one of the more central issues for the Commission; namely, how the unemployment crisis affected already socially and economically vulnerable groups. Looking at the development over the entire decade, three groups stand out as particularly disadvantaged in terms of individual welfare resources: young adults, immigrants and single mothers. The downturn for these groups was especially accentuated in terms of employment and income. Young people and immigrants trying to get into the labour market during the crisis years faced the problems of newcomers to the systems of social protection. The poor economic development for single mothers could essentially be attributed to the shortage of work in general and of full‐time work in particular that followed from the unemployment crisis. As a consequence, the importance of selective benefits increased and the relative size of all public transfers – despite rationing measures – stayed fairly unchanged. The results highlight the great influence of macroeconomic conditions and policy making for the welfare of vulnerable groups in society.

The purpose of this paper is twofold, partly exploratory; to determine the degree to which Rowntree's poverty cycles are still apparent among the most advanced industrial nations, and partly analytical; to examine how successful different sociopolitical strategies have been in eliminating poverty over the life-cycle. The paper seeks to make a contribution in relation to earlier studies by both examining changes within singular countries and by comparing trends cross-nationally provisions.

Im Machtressourcen-Ansatz werden Wohlfahrtsstaaten als Ergebnis von langfristigen Interaktionen zwischen gesellschaftlichen Interessengruppen betrachtet, die an Austausch wie auch an Konflikt beteiligt sind. Dabei werden die relativen Fähigkeiten der verschiedenen Handelnden und Interessengruppen, Ansprüche zu stellen und, wenn möglich, durchzusetzen als fruchtbarer Ausgangspunkt für Analysen der Verteilungsergebnisse und des Ausmaßes an Ungleichheit zwischen Bürgern betrachtet. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht auf der Basis des Machtressourcen-Ansatzes die Folgen von Verteilungskonflikten für die Veränderungen bei den sozialen Bürgerrechten. Die Datenbasis für die empirische Analyse umfasst 18 Länder mit ununterbrochener politischer Demokratie nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Australien, Österreich, Belgien, Kanada, Dänemark, Finnland, Frankreich, Deutschland, Irland, Italien, Japan, die Niederlande, Neuseeland, Norwegen, Schweden, die Schweiz, das Vereinigte Königreich und die Vereinigten Staaten. Zunächst wird der Machtressourcen-Ansatzes vorgestellt. Dann diskutieren die Autoren die Rolle der Arbeitgeber in der Wohlfahrtsstaatsentwicklung. Im Anschluss daran werden mögliche Unterschiede zwischen der "neuen" und der "alten" Politik des Wohlfahrtsstaates erörtert, ehe die empirischen Analyse den Sozialstaatsabbau näher untersucht. (ICA2)