Ola Sjöberg

The Role of Family Policy Institutions in Explaining Gender-Role Attitudes: A Comparative Multilevel Analysis of Thirteen Industrialized Countries

This article examines the role of institutionalized family policy in structuring attitudes towards female labour force participation in 13 industrialized countries. Two different perspectives on explaining the role of family policy institutions are distinguished. According to the first perspective, gender-role attitudes will differ cross-nationally according to the capacity of family policy institutions to reconcile work in the home with work in the paid labour force. According to the second perspective, institutions such as family policies can give rise to a certain collection of norms regarding the ‘proper’ role of women in society. Cross-national variation in family policies will, according to this perspective, have important implications for gender-role attitudes primarily because it will affect what is seen as normatively appropriate behaviour, rather then affecting the returns expected from alternative choices. The empirical analysis, using multilevel regression techniques on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), indicates that variations in family policy models can contribute significantly to our understanding of cross-national variations in gender-role attitudes. It is also shown that the way gender-role attitudes are measured and conceptualized can have important implications for how cross-national differences in these attitudes are explained.

Social Insurance as a Collective Resource: Unemployment Benefits, Job Insecurity and Subjective Well-being in a Comparative Perspective

This article argues that unemployment benefits are providing a crucial but often overlooked function by reducing the insecurity associated with modern labor markets. Because job insecurity is associated with concerns about future financial security, economic support during unemployment may lessen the negative effects of job insecurity on employed individuals’ well-being. Using data from the European Social Survey, this article shows that the generosity of unemployment benefits makes a difference to the subjective well-being of employed individuals, especially those with limited economic resources and an insecure position in the labor market. These results indicate that unemployment benefits may be viewed as a collective resource with important external benefits, i.e., benefits to society over and above those to the unemployed who directly utilize such benefits.

Welfare trends in Sweden: balancing the books for the 1990s

Welfare trends in Sweden: balancing the books for the 1990s : Journal of European Social Policy

Unemployment insurance and deteriorating self-rated health in 23 European countries

Background The global financial crisis of 2008 is likely to have repercussions on public health in Europe, not least through escalating mass unemployment, fiscal austerity measures and inadequate social protection systems. The purpose of this study is to analyse the role of unemployment insurance for deteriorating self-rated health in the working age population at the onset of the fiscal crisis in Europe. Methods Multilevel logistic conditional change models linking institutional-level data on coverage and income replacement in unemployment insurance to individual-level panel data on self-rated health in 23 European countries at two repeated occasions, 2006 and 2009. Results Unemployment insurance significantly reduces transitions into self-rated ill-health and, particularly, programme coverage is important in this respect. Unemployment insurance is also of relevance for the socioeconomic gradients of health at individual level, where programme coverage significantly reduces health risks attached to educational attainment. Conclusions Unemployment insurance mitigated adverse health effects both at individual and country-level during the financial crisis. Due to the centrality of programme coverage, reforms to unemployment insurance should focus on extending the number of insured people in the labour force.

Ambivalent Attitudes, Contradictory Institutions : Ambivalence in Gender-Role Attitudes in Comparative Perspective

The purpose of this article is to analyze the extent and determinants of ambivalent — that is, seemingly inconsistent and contradictory — attitudes with regard to gender roles and female participation in the labor force from a comparative point of view. Drawing upon the work of Robert Merton and Elinor Barber, it is argued that attitudinal ambivalence may arise as a consequence of a disjunction between people’s aspirations and the structural possibility of realizing them. One such disjunction with possible importance for ambivalence with regard to gender role attitudes is between, on the one hand, the massive increase in women’s participation in higher education, which has increased women’s opportunities as well as aspirations to pursue career and labor market goals similar to those of men, and on the other hand, the emergence of institutions that allow women to take advantage of these opportunities by providing the means to reconcile work at home with paid work. The empirical analyses, using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) for 26 countries, presents strong evidence in favor of this argument: the greater the difference between rates of change in female educational attainment and institutions that might reconcile paid work with motherhood, the greater is attitudinal ambivalence with regard to gender roles.

Unemployment and Unemployment Benefits in the OECD 1960-1990 - An Empirical Test of Neo-Classical Economic Theory

The role of unemployment benefits in explaining the rise and apparent persistence of OECD unemployment has attracted a great deal of scholarly as well as political interest. The disincentive effect of unemployment benefits has mostly been studied with micro-level data, whereas the importance of different unemployment regimes for explaining cross-national differences in unemployment rates has been a rather unexplored area of research. For the purpose of this article, data was collected on the duration and replacement levels of unemployment benefits for an average production worker in 17 OECD countries for the period 1960-1990. This data was then related to the level and trends in unemployment in these countries. The results indicate that there is no systematic evidence that countries with more generous unemployment have experienced higher levels of unemployment, nor that reforms to increase the generosity of unemployment benefits have caused unemployment rates to increase. However, there are some indications that a few countries with relatively long benefit duration experienced a relatively large increase in their unemployment rates in the mid-1970s.

Decomposing the effect of social policies on population health and inequalities: an empirical example of unemployment benefits

Aim: The purpose of this study is to discuss and empirically contrast different conceptualizations and operationalizations of social policies in analysing health and educational differences in health cross-nationally. Methods: Country-level institutional and expenditure data on unemployment benefit schemes and individual-level data from the EU-SILC for 23 countries were used to analyse the association between unemployment benefits and self-assessed health for individuals with different educational attainment. Results: The analyses indicate that higher coverage rate (i.e. the proportion of the relevant population eligible for benefits) is associated with better self-related health among both low- and high-educated individuals, but is not linked to smaller educational differences in health. In contrast, replacement rate (i.e. the amount of benefits received) in isolation is not related to self-assessed health. However, in countries where coverage rates are high, higher replacement rates are associated with better health among both low- and high-educated individuals and smaller educational differences in health. Conclusions: Decomposing unemployment benefit programmes into two main dimensions – the proportion in the labour force covered by such programmes and the replacement rate received in case of unemployment – may present further insights into institutional mechanisms linking macro-level social policies to individual-level health outcomes.

The explanation of a paradox? A commentary on Mackenbach with perspectives from research on financial credits and risk factor trends.

The explanation of a paradox? : A commentary on Mackenbach with perspectives from research on financial credits and risk factor trends

A Framework for Comparing Social Protection in Developing and Developed Countries: The Example of Child Benefits

The article outlines a conceptual and theoretical framework for improved comparative analysis of publicly provided social protection in developing countries, drawing on the research tradition of the study of longstanding welfare democracies. An important element of the proposed institutional approach is the establishment of comparable qualitative and quantitative indicators for social protection. The empirical example of child benefits indicates that differences between developed and developing countries should not be exaggerated, and that the prevalence of child benefits in sub-Saharan African and Latin American countries today resembles the inter-war period (1919-1938) situation in developed regions.

Old-age pensions and population health: A global and cross-national perspective

Social security schemes can reduce poverty risk and increase resources available for individuals and families, and these schemes may therefore have an important role to play in population health in both high- and middle-income countries. This article analyses the linkage between effective coverage of old-age pension schemes and life expectancy in a sample of 93 high- and middle-income countries at the end of the twenty-first century. The analyses support the notion that social security schemes, and especially programmes with a universal approach, may have positive effects on population health, even after taking into account the effect of levels of economic development, income inequality and essential characteristics of health care systems. This article also demonstrates that there is no evident relationship between levels of economic development and social security legislation: historically, late industrialisers were often first in introducing major social security schemes, and today there is no clear cross-national relationship between levels of economic development and the proportion of the population covered by old-age pension schemes.