Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Care in Europe: what makes for generosity?

Ivan Privalko, Bertrand Mâitre, Dorothy Watson and Raffaele Grotti 21st November 2019

How well children, dependent adults and the elderly are cared for isn’t about national stereotypes—but it does reflect welfare regimes.

care
Ivan Privalko

Across Europe there are country differences in how families care for children, dependent adults and the elderly. While some of these differences could be cultural, stemming from what people consider ‘right’ or appropriate in each country, we also show in a recent report that welfare services play a role in determining patterns of care.

Childcare

When it comes to formal childcare services, where care is provided by a paid worker in a formal setting, ‘social-democratic’ Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden, lead the way. ‘Corporatist’ continental-European states show lower coverage, with Austria, Belgium and France reporting less access to formal care than their Scandinavian counterparts; ‘southern’ welfare states, such as Italy and Spain, show the lowest formal childcare use. ‘Liberal’ states such as Ireland and the UK sit closer to southern states, rather than corporatist comparators.

care
Bertrand Maître

These differences in access affect country differences in wider childcare options, such as family help and childminding services. Family help with childcare (where family members, other than the parent, step in to help) is particularly prominent in Ireland, England and France but virtually non-existent in Scandinavian countries. Does this suggest that Scandinavian grandparents are uninterested in looking after their grandkids, when compared to British grandparents? We would argue not.

care
Dorothy Watson

Instead, parents in countries with little access to formal childcare must create a patchwork of care using other forms—whether exclusively parental care, where a parent (typically the mother) provides most, or non-parental family care, where a relative provides care while the parents are away, or some mix of several options. Often the gaps which arise from these patchworked solutions cannot be closed completely, leading to country differences in unmet needs for formal childcare. We estimate that unmet childcare needs are most common in the UK, Spain and Ireland and least prevalent in Denmark, Belgium and Sweden.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.
care
Raffaele Grotti

Such gaps have distinct country properties: they cannot be explained by differences in household compositions, lone parenthood, disability status or social class between countries. Even when we take account of these characteristics, of the countries considered the Nordics have the least amount of unmet childcare need, while the UK, Ireland and Spain have the greatest deficit. Unmet need for formal childcare is further associated with material deprivation and mother’s non-employment, though the causal path is likely to operate in both directions.

Wherever households cannot secure formal childcare or adequate access to it, they have a higher chance of experiencing social exclusion and deprivation. Interestingly, households with no need for formal childcare, where children receive traditional forms of care, are also more likely to experience material deprivation than households with adequate formal childcare. The fact that these households report no need for formal childcare could be the consequence of adaptive attitudes when access to formal childcare is difficult. (This effect is far smaller, however, than that of inadequate care.)

Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s classical welfare-regime typology fits our discussion of childcare and social exclusion well. There is still variance within welfare-regime clusters—differences  remain among the social-democratic countries, for instance—but, in general, social-democratic states have little unmet need for formal childcare, while liberal and southern states have more. That under-supply of services is associated with a range of negative outcomes, such as deprivation and non-employment.

Home care

Corporatist and social-democratic states are also more likely to provide home care than most liberal and southern states. Yet of the 11 countries considered in our study, the majority of those who require help at home, due to an illness or disability, do not receive a formal service for this need. This is even true of Austria (41 per cent) and France (49 per cent), which have some of the highest rates of formal home-care access. Unsurprisingly, Ireland (24 per cent) and the UK (18 per cent) have low home-care coverage, while in Italy (12 per cent) and Spain (12 per cent) formal care is minimal.

Most home care is provided informally by family members. As with childcare, countries fit the welfare-regime typology very well, with social-democratic and corporatist countries showing little unmet need and liberal and southern countries manifesting higher incidence. Once again, these country differences cannot be explained by differences in the prevalence of disability, in social class or lone parenthood across countries, when we control for them, pointing to institutional divergences in access to home care.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Unmet need for home care is also closely tied to material deprivation, even after controlling for a range of predictors, but is not associated with non-employment. This suggests households are having to balance care obligations with employment—and caring full-time has become less of an option.

Political will

So how do countries differ in terms of caring for the most vulnerable? In short, social-democratic and corporatist states provide more resources to families with young children or those where respondents need daily help in the home because of old age or infirmity. Southern and liberal states leave families to their own devices.

Southern states may claim to lack the resources to increase provision. But there is little reason other than lack of political will as to why wealthier states such as Ireland and the UK cannot match their Scandinavian, or at least their continental-European, partners.

Ivan Privalko, Bertrand Mâitre, Dorothy Watson and Raffaele Grotti

Ivan Privalko is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Economic and Social Research Institute. Bertrand Maître is a senior research officer at the ESRI and joint programme co-ordinator for research on social inclusion and equality. Dorothy Watson is a research professor at the ESRI and joint principal investigator for the Growing Up in Ireland project. Raffaele Grotti is a research fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute and a former post-doctoral research fellow at the ESRI.

Home ・ Politics ・ Care in Europe: what makes for generosity?

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

Gazprom,Putin,Nordstream,Putin,Schröder How the public loses out when politicians cash inKatharina Pistor
defence,europe,spending Ukraine and Europe’s defence spendingValerio Alfonso Bruno and Adriano Cozzolino
North Atlantic Treaty Organization,NATO,Ukraine The Ukraine war and NATO’s renewed credibilityPaul Rogers
transnational list,European constituency,European elections,European public sphere A European constituency for a European public sphereDomènec Ruiz Devesa
hydrogen,gas,LNG,REPowerEU EU hydrogen targets—a neo-colonial resource grabPascoe Sabido and Chloé Mikolajczak

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube