A Comparative Welfare State Data Set, 1960-2000

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

Since its publication in 1990, Gosta Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism has been perhaps the most frequently cited comparative study of the welfare state. His typology of three distinctive welfare regimes, based on empirical measures of the outcomes of social policy, has been referenced and reproduced in numerous studies, serving as a critical starting point for subsequent work. Yet the empirical data Esping-Andersen used in developing his popular typology (specifically, the de-commodification index and regime stratification measures) is outdated and inadequate for contemporary research needs. It is based on a cross-section of social program characteristics in a single year, 1980. Even for that year, the results have not been replicated. It is indeed surprising, then, that prominent work continues to reproduce (somewhat uncritically) Esping-Andersen's empirical data to describe and characterize welfare state regimes almost twenty years later. This investigation develops a cross-national and time series data set of comparative welfare state outcomes in 18 OECD countries based generally on EspingAndersen's programmatic criteria. In addition, the investigators collect data that take steps towards overcoming a gender-bias in the original three worlds typology. The project collects and makes public to the international scholarly community annual data on the components of welfare state regimes and outcomes from 1960 to the present. Future updates will keep the data set as current as possible. The data set contributes to the systematic comparison of welfare state programs in advanced capitalist democracies. It will be a valuable tool in developing and testing theories of welfare state development as well as how public policies operate and evolve, and constitute a basis for advancing systematic comparative scholarship on the welfare state beyond its current reliance on program expenditure data. The project: o provides an important "update" and history of the characteristics of national welfare states in a way that is empirically consistent with Esping-Andersen's seminal work o allows researchers to test theories of social policy dynamics-- e.g., "convergence" or "crisis" arguments linked to demographics or globalization, and "path dependency" or "new politics" arguments--that the available expenditure data cannot o incorporates important features of how welfare states provide benefits to "liberate" and assist women in traditional roles of social reproduction, i.e., care-giving. The investigation promises to enhance substantially our understanding of the topic and produces a dataset that will be used widely by scholars interested in the topic.