Models of a welfare state in European countries

The article is concerned with the evolution process of European-style social welfare state. The welfare state is considered as a set of institutionalized strategies in the context of social citizen rights, which provide protection for everyone who can and is experiencing economic and/or social difficulties. Nowadays, there has been a significant amount of interest in the concept of a welfare state. The concept passed a long way of formation through its implementation in models of countries' development and repeated crises. This interest is contingent on actual issues of evaluating effects that lie in the plane of the influence of various welfare state aspects on the socioeconomic processes taking place in countries. In this context, particular attention is focused on redistributive mechanisms. In some countries, income redistribution is a secondary goal and even a side effect if it appears at all in documents regulating the social policy of government. The approaches used within the framework of specific models have many differences either in the effectiveness of results or in the role of state institutions in terms of resource provision. The study of the approaches makes it possible to assess the impact of the welfare state on the level of income inequality. On the other hand, it is important to determine what kind of protection from social risks (age, unemployment, disability, etc.) different welfare state models can offer, how these ensure the preservation of an individual's income necessary to meet a sufficiently wide range of needs. In the furtherance of this goal, the existing welfare state models - liberal, social democratic, conservative and South/Mediterranean - were analyzed. The study focuses on methods of measuring the resource component of social models within the framework of the described cases. The analysis has revealed that welfare states differ from each other not only in the amount of social budget spending but also in approaches of building their social protection systems. These differences have a significant impact on operation of labour market, people's work and family life and also on the level of social protection and income equality promoted by societies. The results of the redistributive mechanisms' influence of social state models on the level of income inequality were analyzed. The article identifies problematic elements of models critically dependent on the budget that governments spend to reduce inequality. It is difficult to count on increases in the volumes of resources necessary to ensure a permanent protection of people from social risks under unpredictable financial markets and real economic consequences of global financial crises. The considered aspects allow formulating recommendations for the formation of a welfare state in the Russian Federation.

Keywords

Authors

References