This thesis is an attempt to capture and understand how young people in Stockholm experience the housing market. It explores what housing policy decisions made by government actually do to people ‘on the ground.’ The research asks: How does the housing crisis manifest for young adults living in Stockholm?This study centers around interviews with 27 young people who are living at least part-time in greater Stockholm. All of these informants were between the ages of 23 and 30 (with the exception of one woman who was 32). The three chapters of this thesis are organized the three major social themes: independence vs. co-dependence; privilege and perception of ‘luck’; and discrimination and scamming. The results show clearly that the housing market does not only mean that people need to pay expensive rents or that some live at home with their parents. Rather, most of the informants lived in temporary and often suboptimal living conditions, and some had experienced emotional harm as a result. By focusing on something as personal as one’s home, this investigation led to discussions of such topics such as common understandings of Swedish society, relationship dynamics, and young people’s feelings about being “adult.”

This thesis examines how different welfare state regimes affect gender relations by examining variations in welfare regimes and outcomes for women between Western European countries. The research seeks to understand how the diverse systems of social provision affect women: particularly with regard to their position in the labor market and in their ability to balance occupational and domestic work. Using a comparative, qualitative approach, I compare three Western European welfare states (Germany, the United Kingdom, and Sweden) to evaluate gender-relevant welfare policy with female employment rates, unemployment rates, and wage differentials. Welfare states and labor market policies affect outcomes for women because these policies influence and structure women's ability to enter paid labor and at the same time perform the majority of household labor and care work. To study the effect of welfare state variations upon women, I argue that a gender-focused model of welfare states is necessary. I borrow from Diane Sainsbury's (1996) framework establishing two contrasting ideal-types and combine this with Pascal and Lewis' (2004) gender equality model. Using this framework, I will assess whether my case studies vary around specific gender dimensions of variation including bases of entitlement, maternal and parental leave, pension, and the organization of care work. Preliminary findings align Germany and the United Kingdom with a male breadwinner gender model and Sweden with a dual-earner dual-carer model, although recent policy reforms in Germany and the United Kingdom oriented toward a Scandinavian welfare model may affect future gender outcomes. My research question hopes to uncover how welfare regimes and specific gender-relevant policies support or ignore women's labor force participation by reconciling work and home for women through an evaluation of gender-relevant outcomes for women. Systematically looking at the structure of welfare state provision and outcomes through a gender-relevant framework enhances our knowledge of the ways in which the varieties of gender regimes accommodate or perpetuate women's inequality in democracies.

No description available.

<p>One of the more interesting changes observed over the Twentieth Century has been the development of industrialized nations such as Canada into "welfare states", wherein there is some degree of a redistribution of national wealth, in the interest of creating a social safety net. While the Canadian welfare system grew and matured during the early and mid 20th Century, the larter quarter has been a time of stagnation and in some cases, retrenchment. A key rationale for proposals to reduce seniors' benefits has been the accelerated rate of population aging, and how current programs cannot be sustained in light of the increasing numbers of the elderly who will draw on them.</p> <p>In response to these concerns, the Progressive Conservative government made a number of structural changes to Old Age Security and the tax system in the 1980's, in the form of partial de-indexation, which would effectively decrease the number of people eligible for Old Age Security, and reduce tax credits available to seniors each year.</p> <p>This thesis uses time series national data to show how benefits and tax credits have declined over the last decade. From a political economy perspective, this process can be viewed as a gradual and stealthy transformation of the welfare state. Government maintained income security is gradually being dismantled and placed back into the hands of the market place. The tax system is being redefined in such a way that tax cuts that middle and lower income Canadians rely on are slowly losing value.</p> <p>While RRSP contribution levels have been increased and some Canadians invest to both prepare for retirement and to gain the tax exemption for the invested income, only those with higher incomes can gain the most from this option. The effects ofthis process are discussed and the implications are considered in terms of distributional equity.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The Swedish welfare system is in transformation: while previously, a vast public sector has taken responsibility for welfare provision, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly invited to participate as service providers in the past years. In a qualitative case study, this paper analyses in which ways three NGOs in Malmö perceive their role in the welfare system and by identifying challenges and prospects in the cooperation with the local government. Semi-structured interviews with representatives of the NGOs are analysed through the lens of the social investment discourse by using qualitative content analysis (QCA). Findings show that the perception of all respondents exceeds a substitutionary role of civil society in welfare provision, while two respondents emphasize the social responsibility of the state. The view of one respondent demonstrates a significant change in conventional civil society engagement towards the provision of professionally managed service work. Finally, the paper anticipates that the negotiation of social responsibility could change the understanding of socio-economic human rights as such.

The Swedish labour market is one of the most gender segregated in Europe, and despite the extensive legislation on gender equality and discrimination, the health gap between working women and working men are continually increasing. This thesis has two purposes. First, to analyse how the work-related health gap between women dominated workplaces and maledominated workplaces are challenged, problematized and/or consolidated through workenvironment policy discourses. Second, to analyse health experiences from preschool professionals and eventual effects on this group created by the policy representations. The analytical tools have mainly been provided through a WPR-approach and the material has been policy documents and interviews with preschool professionals. The results show that there is an inconsistency with how the problem is formulated and who is thought to be responsible for the problem in between the policy levels. Also, the problem representations had effects on the preschool professionals who were caught in between rationalities. Finally, the results confirm policy as a product of social, political and historical context as well as its ability to shape identities and expand or restrict the room for manoeuvre of groups and individuals.

A central theme in the comparative political economy of the welfare state is the complementaries between political institutions, social policy, and labour markets. Yet little has been written to uncover this political-economic nexus in China, the world’s second largest economy. This thesis partly addresses this gap by studying the country’s public pension arrangement, the most expensive component of the Chinese welfare state. It reveals the working of the political-economic nexus in contemporary China by showing how it leads to two puzzling characteristics of the Chinese pension system, namely the rapid expansion in the absence of electoral pressures and the persistent regional fragmentation despite an authoritarian central government. It argues that the decentralised authoritarianism, in which China’s authoritarian central state delegates to regional governments and motivates them to achieve its developmental goals, drives municipal authorities to compete with each other in generating economic growth. In the inter-municipal economic competition, local leaders adopt an expansionary yet localising pension policy. This facilitates the formation of specific industrial skills, which are productive for particular local industries, and the retention of skilled industrial workers. All of this is important to local economic development in a context of industrial upgrading and labour market tightening. It is argued this is the political-economic logic of China’s pension system.

Zugl.: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-10-06T18:15:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 tiagorattesdeandrade.pdf: 501169 bytes, checksum: b22e93b41450624676880cc6121651f7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-10-07T12:16:13Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 tiagorattesdeandrade.pdf: 501169 bytes, checksum: b22e93b41450624676880cc6121651f7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-07T12:16:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tiagorattesdeandrade.pdf: 501169 bytes, checksum: b22e93b41450624676880cc6121651f7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-10-14 / O presente trabalho tem como primeiro objetivo analisar as transformações históricas da política de Assistência Social no Brasil desde a década de 1930, quando se estrutura no Brasil um particular regime de welfare state. Em decorrência de uma série de lutas políticas e transformações institucionais um novo modelo de assistência emerge com a constituição de 1988 e ganha regulamentação com a Lei Orgânica de Assistência Social de 1993. Dessas transformações inicia-se a partir de 2003 a criação e implantação do Sistema Único de Assistência Social no Brasil. O segundo objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o processo de implantação deste sistema no município de Juiz de Fora – MG. Para isso foram analisados estudos pré-existentes acerca da rede social do município e foi realizado um estudo de caso, através da analise de atas das reuniões do Conselho Municipal de Assistência Social e de um conjunto de entrevistas em profundidade com atores envolvidos neste processo a fim de analisar os desafios colocados para realização desta tarefa. / This dissertation wants to analyze the historic transformations of social works policy in Brasil since 1930, when is structured a unique system of welfare state. Due to a series of political struggles and institutional changes after 1988 Constitution and Social Work Organic Law regulation, in 1993, a new model of Social Assistance born. These changes will effectively start in 2003 with the creation and implementation of Social Assistance Unic System, called SUAS, in Brazil. Besides that, this dissertation analyzes the implementation of this system in a city, Juiz de Fora. Were analyzed the pre-existing knowledge of the social network in the city and performed a case study through the analysis of minutes of meetings of the Municipal Social Welfare and a set of deep interviews with actors involved in this process in order examine the challenges to this task.

The EU is faced with problems related to the unrestricted access to national welfare states of mobile EU workers. These problems are mainly framed by the growing opposition to the free movement of workers. The strongest contributing factor to these negative attitudes has commonly said to be actor-based, i.e. the media or political elites. However, more recent research has been shifting the focus to institutions as explanatory factor. I raise the question of to what extent individuals’ attitudes towards the free movement of workers are associated with their exposure to different welfare state institutional contexts. More specifically I explore the role of “earnings-relatedness” in specific social insurances for the attitudes of potential benefit claimants. Analyzing 12 EU/EFTA countries who are net receivers of mobile EU workers I find that in welfare state contexts with a high degree of earnings-relatedness the opposition to free movement is significantly lower than otherwise among the unemployed. Furthermore, I discover that these observations seem to vary depending on what part of the social insurance system one is analyzing.