The Swedish welfare state finds itself in the middle of two major upheavals: The impact of technology and immigration. Having taken in more refugees per capita than most other countries, the pillars of the welfare state are being shaken. Digital technologies are set to strengthen already existing trends towards job and wage polarization. This book explores how these trends are more pronounced due to the rigidity of the labor market and the comprehensiveness of tax-financed welfare services.
The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Era comprehensively addresses the central dynamics of the digitalization of the media industry in the Nordic countries—Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland—and the ways media organizations there are transforming to address the new digital environment. Taking a comparative approach, the authors provide an overview of media institutions, content, use, and policy throughout the region, focusing on the impact of information and communication technology/internet and digitalization on the Nordic media sector. Illustrating the shifting media landscape the authors draw on a wide range of cases, including developments in the press, television, the public service media institutions, and telecommunication.
Focusing on health care, education, and elderly care, Privatizing Welfare Services draws on extensive research on the consequences of introducing market-based mechanisms to deliver welfare services. Empirical evidence over the last few decades is summarized and condensed to policy lessons. How to balance equity and efficiency is a central theme. The book also addresses the challenges of financing the Swedish model of welfare services as well as the importance of management practices and public opinion. The privatization of service production has occurred despite major political controversy between two competing visions for the welfare state. Successful experiments have spread organically to neighbouring municipalities. What was done well in this process and what were the mistakes? The book addresses the fundamental economic challenges, the trends of the future, and the implications for institutional design.
This volume explores how digitalization--in different forms--affects the welfare state. Digitalization is likely to have a lasting impact on work, welfare, and the distribution of income. It will radically transform not only social risks in health, education and the labour market, but also the means by which these risks are addressed. The volume studies how digitalization affects policies as well as the underlying power relationship between actors, i.e. the politics of the welfare state. The volume brings together internationally renowned welfare-state scholars to identify - the socio-economic challenges that result from rapid technological change; - the ensuing political conflicts and struggles in the domain of welfare state reform broadly defined; - how these changes challenge and shape existing labour market and welfare state arrangements. Overall, the volume explains the potential and real political and policy responses to these challenges, grasps the contours of future developments, and reflects on whether the current wave of technological change might promote the emergence of a new paradigm of welfare state policy-making. The rapid and accelerating pace of technological change has potentially radical ramifications for the welfare state that demand an engagement with possible future scenarios. The authors therefore adopt a forward-looking perspective. Based on this approach, the volume uniquely offers a theoretically informed empirical basis for social science and public debates about the long-term implications of the digital revolution for the welfare state, covering a broad range of policy areas such as education, pensions, labour market policies, tax policy, and health care.
"Around the turn of the 21st century, new social policies started to develop all around the world. Bolsa Familia in Brazil, Progresa in Mexico, Superémonos in Costa Rica, Juntos in Peru... almost all Latin American countries have developed "conditional cash transfers" (CCTs), a new type of social policy usually conditioning benefits for poor families on their children going to school or attending health checkups. At the same time, some old industrialized countries famously known for being the heaven of the male breadwinner model have introduced surprising innovation in their welfare systems: in Germany massive investment in preschool childcare (Kita) since the early 2000s and the introduction of two "daddy months" in a German parental leave scheme in 2007; in Japan a well-paid parental leave in 2014 and universalization of free preschool education for ages 3-5 in 2017; in South Korea childcare facilities for children below the age of five made free of charge in 2013. Policies aimed at investing in children's care and education and in mothers' labor market participation seem to have bloomed almost everywhere. Worldwide there has been a sharp increase in access to secondary and tertiary education. Youth training programs have spread in many Latin American countries, while European countries have introduced youth guarantees, an innovative inclusive policy for their NEETs (young people not in education, employment, or training)"--
Focusing on health care, education, and elderly care, Privatizing Welfare Services draws on extensive research on the consequences of introducing market-based mechanisms to deliver welfare services. Empirical evidence over the last few decades is summarized and condensed to policy lessons. How to balance equity and efficiency is a central theme. The book also addresses the challenges of financing the Swedish model of welfare services as well as the importance of management practices and public opinion. The privatization of service production has occurred despite major political controversy between two competing visions for the welfare state. Successful experiments have spread organically to neighbouring municipalities. What was done well in this process and what were the mistakes? The book addresses the fundamental economic challenges, the trends of the future, and the implications for institutional design.
This book explores the ways in which different generations think about how the welfare state is organised at present, and how it will be organised in future. Using the results of a study from Canada, Australia and Sweden, the book’s findings complement more traditional studies of the welfare sector, capturing the anxieties of citizens about the present and future of their countries’ welfare models, and presenting their thoughts on how the system can be re-organised in future. Positioning their three-country study within the history of the welfare state around the world, the authors seek to re-assess the role of the welfare state in governments around the world. Their findings will be of interest to those studying welfare policy as well as innovations such as basic income, e-health and policy responses to automisation.
The European Social Model is at a crossroad. Although from the 1990s onwards, the threat of an imminent crisis shaped much of the rhetoric surrounding the future of the welfare state, disagreement within the academic community remains. What is however increasingly clear is that with the global financial crisis and the Euro crisis that followed it, the challenges the European Social Model faces have become more acute and demand action. This volume launches a multifaceted inquiry into these challenges. Each contribution, written by renowned scholars in their fields, represents an in-depth exploration of issues that cut to the core of current political, economic and social processes. They are an invitation to the seasoned scholars as well as to the beginning students of social sciences, public administration or journalism to engage with, by now, a large body of scholarship, to accompany the authors in their endeavours to seek an explanation to burning questions and start their own inquiries.
Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process causes (or may cause) the autonomy of various labor functions, and its impact in creating (or stymieing) various job opportunities on the labor market. This book also seeks to illuminate what actors/groups are mostly benefited by the digitalization/digital transformation and which actors/groups that are put at risk by it. This book takes its point of departure from a 2016 OECD report that contends that the impact digitalization has on the future of labor is ambiguous, as on the one hand it is suggested that technological change is labor-saving, but on the other hand, it is suggested that digital technologies have not created new jobs on a scale that it replaces old jobs. Another 2018 OECD report indicated that digitalization and automation as such does not pose a real risk of destroying any significant number of jobs for the foreseeable future, although tasks would by and large change significantly. This would affects welfare, as most of its revenue stems from taxation, and particularly so from the taxation on labor (directly or indirectly). For this reason, this book will set out to explore how the future technological and societal advancements impact labor conditions. The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching and controversial take on how various aspects of the labor market can be (and are) affected the ongoing digitalization trend in a way that is not covered by extant literature. As such, this book intends to cater to a wider readership, from a general audience and students, to specialized professionals and academics wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the possible future developments of the labor market in light of an accelerating digitalization/digital transformation of society at large.
In the five years since Money for Everyone was published the idea of a Citizen’s Basic Income has rocketed in interest to an idea whose time has come. In moving the debate on from the desirability of a basic income this fully updated and revised edition now includes comprehensive discussions on feasibility and implementation. Using the consultation undertaken by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales as a basis, Torry examines a number of implementation methods for Citizen’s Basic Income and considers the cost implications. Including real-life examples from the UK, and data from case studies and pilots in Alaska, Namibia, India, Iran and elsewhere, this is the essential research-based introduction to the Citizen’s Basic Income.
