Comparative Welfare Entitlements Project

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

Countries across the world vary in the extent to which they provide social welfare supports to citizens, and these benefits change over time. Social scientists and policymakers require data tracking these distributions and changes to assist with policy formulation and analyses of policy change. An existing data set, the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset (CWED), is a cross-national, time series data set of comparative welfare state characteristics in 21 countries covering the years 1972-2010. This project expands the CWED to provide coverage of key social welfare programs in 33 countries and across the 50 US states over the last five decades. The expanded database will also provide new information about programs to support working mothers and people with non-traditional labor force attachment. CWEP will assist educators, policymakers, and journalists as a tool for visualizing the diverse array of social protection arrangements across the US and around the world over decades, providing a more historical perspective of the evolution of social welfare policy. The combination of international and state policy data produced in this project will help us to better understand the many factors that shape social welfare policy across the world as well as how social welfare policies affect social and economic outcomes for individuals and families in the global economy. The project expands and extends the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Data set (CWED) through 2020 (renaming it Comparative Welfare Entitlements Project). CWEP first expands coverage of the existing CWED data to 33 countries over 48 years (1972-2020). Second, it provides a new data set of US states' cash transfer programs, such as unemployment insurance, cash social assistance (AFDC/TANF), state SSI, and (for the several states that have such programs) short-term disability. Third, it improves the web interface of CWED, allowing researchers and the general public to visualize features of both CWED and SWB data. The project will use these data to evaluate several theoretical questions, incorporating data from the post-Great Recession era, including statistical analyses of: the impact of political partisanship on policy; the impact of immigration and ethnic diversity on social policy; the long-term effects of incremental policy change; and the distributional implications of welfare reforms. Previous versions of the data set have been used in over 200 peer reviewed research articles in the last decade. The new data set will be of considerable use to researchers in disciplines including political science, sociology, social policy, economics, social work and public health, thus expanding social science infrastructure. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.