Center for Comparative Welfare State Research

About the Center for Comparative Welfare State Research

Under the direction of Academic Board, the Center’s research program focuses upon three topical areas of interest related to current developments in modern welfare states:

Agency and social inequality in later life

The concept of ‘Active ageing’ has become a central reference point in political and academic reflections as to how to organize the ‘good life’ in older ages. However, the ‘Active ageing’ concept is polysemic and subject to different theoretical approaches, analytical perspectives, and empirical observations, and the concept includes different spheres or domains of life, i.e., labor market participation, voluntary work, and social rights in relation to retirement, care and access to health services, as well as the extent to which active ageing is preconditioned by health, education, having good finances, etc.

Following the Active Ageing Index (AAI) approach developed by Asghar Zaidi and his colleagues, ‘Active ageing’ covers four domains:

1. employment, referring to the employment opportunities and out-comes (employment rates) among 55-64-year olds
2. participation in society, referring to participation in voluntary work, caring for grandchildren and old/frail relatives, as well as political participation
3. independent living, referring to factors such as access to health and long-term care, financial security, pension systems, physical and mental well-being and life-long-learning, including reablement
4. capability, referring to remaining life-expectancy at age 55, use of information and communications technology, and social connectedness

The CCWSR covers the four domains of ‘Active ageing’. The aim is to scrutinize critically, how the welfare state can support ‘Active ageing’ and to analyze whether ‘Active ageing’ is realistic for all citizens – or for whom? This will be analyzed at four levels:

1. At the societal level it will be analyzed how welfare regimes, defined as interactions between the state, market and civil society and embedded in different cultural values, condition ‘Active ageing’. 
2. At the policy level it will be analyzed what policies have been established to strengthen ‘Active ageing’, and with what effects.
3. At the meso or organizational or company level it will be analyzed, how public and private organizations are in practice supporting ideals about ‘Active ageing’.
4. At the micro or individual level, older adults’ practices, motivations for and preferences towards ‘Active ageing’ will be analyzed.

The future of work – inclusions and exclusions in the context of work-welfare policies

According to current scientific and political debates, there are several persistent and new challenges to work-welfare policies of the developed welfare states. The main focus of the research in this area is on the ways in which work-welfare policies are dealing with such challenges, what factors help us understand cross-national differences, and the consequences for social inequality, poverty and social marginalization. These challenges involve: Work-welfare policies aiming to influence labor supply in response to the growing gap between available jobs and workers to fill them in many of the advanced welfare states; the emergence of new tensions in the cultural ideas and discourses about work and family policies, particularly in relation to the role of women’s and men’s work-family behavior and the objectives of the “social investment” perspective on family policy; the ongoing shift in the relationship between formal work and different forms of semi-formal and informal work, the rise of telecommuting. and cross-national differences in the culture of work.

Main debates and reforms of the welfare state in the 21st Century

Over the last several decades, welfare states in the post-industrial economies have been challenged by the emergence of new needs associated with demographic ageing, female labor force participation, the waning bonds of family life, intensifying pressures of migration and the financial burdens of increasing social expenditures required to meet these needs. Deliberations about policy measures to address these developments have given rise to a number of debates around issues including: universal versus selective income supports, social rights versus responsibilities, the rights of citizenship, old age security, public versus private service delivery, compensation for family caregiving and the nature of poverty.