Tommy Ferrarini

From universalism to selectivity: Old wine in new bottles for child benefits in Europe and other countries

The current economic crisis has presented itself as a formidable challenge to the welfare states of Europe. It is more relevant than ever to ask: do existing minimum income protection schemes succe ...

Contracts for life satisfaction and happiness: Justice, Institutions and Outcomes

The poverty outcomes that we analysed in the preceding chapter are undeniably crucial for individual capabilities and life chances. However, favorable material conditions may not automatically translate into high levels of subjective well-being. If citizens have ample material resources but feel miserable, a narrow focus on people’s economic conditions does not provide a satisfactory account of how generational welfare contracts are related to quality of life in a wider sense. In order to provide a more nuanced analysis of how people fare under different generational welfare contracts, we also need to address other, more subjective aspects of citizens’ well-being. While the moral, social and economic foundations of subjective wellbeing are recurrent themes in philosophy, dating back to classical thinkers, systematic empirical investigations are much more recent. Quantitative research on subjective well-being was introduced to the social sciences by psychologists, but in recent years a mounting research interest has also emerged in other disciplines, not least in economics (Argyle, 2009; Frey and Stutzer, 2010; Kahneman and Deaton, 2010). Although the majority of studies have ignored the role of policy and institutions, some attempts have been made to evaluate the relationship between welfare states and subjective well-being. Questions have so far mostly been framed in relation to aggregate spending patterns (Haller and Hadler, 2006; Oishi and Diener, 2014; Ono and Lee, 2013; Veenhoven, 2000) or broad welfare state regimes (Deeming and Hayes, 2012; Radcliff, 2001), on the whole with quite ambiguous results. Pacek and Radcliff (2008) is one of the few studies that directly addresses institutional effects, using a generic measure including a great variety of legislative dimensions to link welfare states to different levels of happiness. Yet possible relationships between the generational structure of social citizenship and quality of life remain underresearched. To determine how welfare states may facilitate welfare-enhancing cooperation for the mutual benefit of all age groups, our purpose in this chapter is to analyse generational welfare contracts and subjective well-being. We will thereby complement our previous analysis of objective poverty outcomes. However, when evaluating links between policy and subjective

Three dimensions of generational justice: Justice, Institutions and Outcomes

In this chapter we investigate the moral significance of generational welfare contracts. We will lay out a justice-based argument for why it matters whether the welfare state is balanced in the sense that it provides equally comprehensive social protection against different age-related social risks. This argument establishes a normative starting point for our empirical investigations on how welfare states affect people belonging to different age groups, and defines welfare-related outcomes that are important to analyse from a generational point of view. The question about generational balance/imbalance helps to situate our empirical contribution in relation to normative debates on generational justice and the welfare state, that is, debates on the values and principles of justice that should guide decisions on how to (re-)distribute resources between persons born at different points in time. The past few decades have seen important developments in the political philosophy of justice between age groups (McKerlie, 2013) and justice in relation to future generations (Gosseries and Meyer, 2009). There is also a growing body of empirical research on the effects of generational politics (Vanhuysse and Goerres, 2012), and specialized debates on how to advance the sustainability and fairness of welfare states in response to ageing societies (Esping-Andersen and Myles, 2006). Yet, discussions of intergenerational justice and the welfare state have too often been conducted in separate compartments. If principles of justice are to provide any sensible practical guidance, it is crucial to link the fundamental values and principles at stake not only to empirical findings about the causes and consequences of the generational structure of social citizenship, but also to specific questions of policy design. Thus, while the emphasis of this book is firmly placed on an empirical analysis of the institutional structures and social outcomes of the generational welfare state, it is also motivated by an explicit aim to connect normative and empirical research more closely, thereby promoting a more holistic treatment of these issues. The theoretical bases of our approach are developed in two steps. In this chapter, we introduce central concepts and values in political phi-