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Welfare States as Lifecycle Redistribution Machines: New article co-authored by VELNET researcher Pieter Vanhuysse

Welfare states, often criticized as ineffective Robin Hoods, are better characterized as piggy banks aiming at lifecycle consumption smoothing. Social policies serve multiple goals for multiple reasons, but in practice they are neither primarily nor solely responsible for inequality reduction.
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  • VELNET - Nationalt Netværk for Velfærdsstudier (Forskningscenter)
    • Af: VELNET

    Vanhuysse et al. (2021) analyze the joint distribution of socio-economic status, age, and all cash and in-kind transfers, financing contributions, and resulting ‘net benefits on a sample of over 400,000 Europeans from 22 EU countries. They find that European welfare states, often maligned as ineffective Robin Hood vehicles riddled with ‘not-only-the-poor’ paradoxes and Matthew effects, are better characterized as lifecycle redistribution machines performing a more important second task rather well: lifecycle consumption smoothing. This carries multiple wider implications for how we (should) understand social policies in Europe. It does not imply, normatively, that social policies ought not to be used for poverty relief and inequality reduction. Rather, other forms of government activity could also be drafted into that same societal effort. For example, road-construction projects and other infrastructure works strongly impact equality, too, as do safety regulations, air pollution standards, public investment in air traffic, exchange rate policy, and carbon taxes. If alleviating poverty and mitigating inequality are deemed societally worthy, such non-social policies could also be judged according to the same yardstick.

     

    Vanhuysse P, Medgyesi M, Gal RI (2021) Welfare states as lifecycle redistribution machines: Decomposing the roles of age and socio-economic status shows that European tax-and-benefit systems primarily redistribute across age groups. PLoS ONE 16(8): e0255760. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255760