Ageing populations and slower growth have compelled governments in mature welfare states to implement fiscal adjustments, but uncertainty persists about whether these measures have successfully curtailed the size of the welfare state. This letter documents that fiscal adjustments reduce social spending more effectively than previously thought. Using data from sixteen advanced economies between 1978 and 2018 and the narrative identification of adjustment plans, I estimate cumulative multipliers with local projections. I find that fiscal adjustments persistently lower social spending, including key components of social consumption and social investment. To explain why austerity does not shelter the welfare state, I present stylized facts about the timing and composition of adjustment plans. First, while public investment cuts concentrate at the beginning of the adjustment period, social consumption cuts accumulate over time. Second, large budget deficits and financial crises are frequent antecedents of the most ambitious fiscal reforms.

The pandemic of Covid-19 exposed critical gaps in social policy and underscored the foundational role of families and households in both societal and economic stability. This introductory chapter to a Special Issue explores the interdependence between formal economic participation and unpaid domestic labour – collectively referred to as ‘social reproduction’. Drawing on feminist political economy, the chapter addresses how gendered and undervalued reproductive labour is essential to economic growth and the realisation of international commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly gender equality and inclusive growth. This Special Issue uses South Korea as a comparative case study due to its unique economic trajectory, rapid demographic ageing, stark gender inequalities, and limited social protection systems. The country’s long working hours, low fertility rate, and pronounced wage and care burdens on women illustrate how inadequate social reproduction support can threaten broader social and economic sustainability. The pandemic further intensified these issues, disrupting institutional supports and deepening inequalities. This Special Issue collectively examines how policies across different contexts either alleviate or exacerbate the tensions between productive and reproductive labour, using South Korea as a focal point for comparison. This comparative analysis highlights the need for structural reforms and cultural change to support effective social reproduction policies, emphasising that gender-equal leave, accessible childcare, and shared caregiving responsibilities are crucial for work-family balance and social well-being. South Korea’s experience illustrates both progress and ongoing challenges, offering valuable lessons on the limitations of market-driven approaches and the importance of resilient, state-supported family policies.

Comparative social policy research frequently deals, implicitly or explicitly, with time and timing in the development of welfare states. We identify three types of such temporal theorizations – i.e. stage models, timed orders, and periodizations – and analyze their relevance for global social policy development. We do so by employing sequence and cluster analysis to a new comprehensive dataset of social policy adoption in 164 countries over 140 years (1880–2019). While our analysis reveals certain common stages of social policy consolidation – from education mandates and health care systems over work-related protections to care services – we also find varying trajectories which challenge conventional regional clustering narratives. Moreover, our analysis highlights two periods which have so far not featured prominently in comparative welfare state research: The interwar years (1919–1929) and the period of decolonization (1949–1969).

This study explores the link between receiving basic income support (BIS) and political alienation in Germany, with a focus on political trust and satisfaction with democracy. We argue that receiving BIS is associated with experiences of material and social exclusion and impairs subjective social integration. Against the background of major structural welfare reforms in recent decades, we assume that BIS recipients are likely to attribute responsibility for their socio-economic disadvantages to the wider political system. We use data from the Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) for the years 2019–2021 and employ multivariate regression analysis. We find that political alienation is more likely to occur among recipients of BIS, especially long-term recipients, than among non-recipients. Social exclusion is an important mechanism: With a higher risk of material deprivation and fewer opportunities for social participation and civic engagement than non-recipients, BIS recipients are more likely to experience subjective social exclusion, which, in turn, contributes to their political alienation. Moreover, our study offers indications that trustful and supportive interactions with welfare authorities can mitigate tendencies of political alienation among BIS recipients.

Do societies with more extensive welfare states also perform better environmentally? Surprisingly, the empirical evidence for this relationship remains inconclusive. We focus on CO2 emissions in lower-income countries and argue that considering state capacity as a moderator helps achieving greater theoretical and empirical clarity in understanding when the welfare state – climate change mitigation relationship. We hypothesize that lower-income societies with more developed welfare states exhibit lower carbon emissions when they also have more state capacity. The underlying mechanism centers on the ability of the state to compensate losers from policy change and its enforcement power required for policy implementation. Using data on CO2 emissions, social protection, and labor market regulations, as well as state capacity in 66 lower-income countries since 2005, we find that carbon emissions tend to be lower in countries characterized both by a welfare state focused on reducing socio-economic inequality and high state capacity.

The underlying logics of how welfare states redistribute financial resources to their citizens have been studied intensively. Researchers have focussed on redistribution based on the principles of work, residency or taxpaying. However, family as a redistributive principle in its own right has never systematically been studied neither for a wide range of welfare regulations, nor for welfare benefits and obligations. Hence we do not know in how far the redistributive logics based on other redistributive principles are also found for the redistributive principle of the family. In this paper we address this question, using EUROMOD to analyse the degree of legally stipulated, family-related redistribution for forty-two hypothetical family forms. In our findings, all EU member-states show family-related redistribution in line with the ‘Robin Hood’ logic, with special redistribution to families with several children, single-earner families, and single parents.

Welfare state research is at a theoretical impasse insofar as it does not systematically speak to the types of social policy effort that may have not only redistributive but also productive consequences. Cautioning against imprudent use of the social investment label this paper argues for a better understanding of how traditional social policies have enabled society’s adaptation to socioeconomic changes and prevented costly experiences of poverty. Synthesizing ideas drawn from development studies in the Global South and welfare state studies in the Global North, and elaborating on the inclusive strand of welfare developmentalism, the paper conceptualizes what allows existing social policies to be simultaneously protective and productive. It reviews current welfare state research and argues that developmentalist ideas help re-centre the (re)productive role of social policy. It proposes principles for thinking coherently about what makes existing welfare state policies developmental, challenging their characterization as exclusively passive or activating. Recognizing the productive impact of existing social policies requires that we explicitly rethink how welfare state policy effort is understood.

Citizen trust is a prerequisite for the success of service provision. However, working relations are typically shaped by power asymmetries and one-sided dependencies, contributing to cautiousness towards or distrust of caseworkers (Dumbrill, 2006; de Boer and Coady, 2007). This article sheds light on the conditions and mechanisms that lead (some) citizens nevertheless to trust their caseworker. Based on thematic coding of semi-structured interviews with twenty-five German and sixteen Danish welfare users, our findings elucidate how shared problem perceptions and positive experiences in direct working relationships with committed, citizens-oriented caseworkers mitigate structural asymmetries and allow trust-building. In particular, they underscore the importance of personal bonding and positive emotions, including feelings of sympathy, or even friendship, and of being seen, understood and respected. Our article strengthens the interpersonal, micro-level perspective on trust-building in welfare service provision and provides new empirical insights into the role of personal relations in trust-adverse institutionalised contexts.

How does party support for gender equality in the labour market affect the gender voting gap? A well-established argument from the literature on gender and political behaviour states that working women tend to vote for left-wing parties more than men because they are stronger supporters of the welfare state. However, no study has assessed whether parties’ welfare positions affect the gender voting gap. Leveraging three decades of public opinion data from sixteen Western democracies, I provide evidence in support of that claim: increases in women’s labour force participation are associated with higher female/male voter ratios for the left, but only when those parties strongly support gender-egalitarian policies in the labour market. These findings confirm and add nuance to the previous understanding of the gap: by focusing on public opinion, previous research overlooked party behaviour. Therefore, my evidence elevates the importance of party strategy in explaining gender differences in voting.

In spite of the upturn in the economy and in employment that has been observed in the EU since 2013 to 2019 (and after COVID-19 crisis), the gap between the figures for indicators of economic growth and those for the trends in domestic living conditions continues to be very wide; growth and newly created jobs are not resulting in a generalised improvement in the welfare of the population. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the recovery period after the Great Recession has not been one of truly inclusive recovery and to provide tentative explanations for this. We focus on the five main EU countries before Brexit. We conclude that the incidence of poverty associated with part-time work is now somewhat greater (‘in-work poverty’) and also that there has been strong containment of wages in the leading countries of the EU over the period under study, and even falls in real wages. At least, redistribution policies have shown themselves to be effective in reducing poverty.