Have More Generous Welfare States Undermined Strong Employment Commitment? Trends over Time in Comparative Perspective
A critical aspect of social protection has always been the trade-off between the adequacy and equity of benefits and their promotion of dependency and distorted work incentives affecting individuals’ general work orientations. Previous findings indicate how commitment to paid work is stronger in coordinated production regimes and more encompassing welfare states, but analyses of trends over time in broader comparative perspective are still lacking, as is also simultaneous assessments of important aspects of job quality. The purpose of this study is therefore twofold. Firstly, trends in employment commitment since the late 1980s are evaluated. Secondly, we examine the role of welfare state institutions for explaining cross-national patterns in employment commitment in thirteen mature welfare states while also taking into account job quality. Preliminary analyses show how most attitude change took place in the earlier period between 1989 and 1997, when employment commitment increased in the encompassing welfare state of Norway but decreased in the two basic security countries Great Britain and the United States. During the later period between 1997 and 2005, for which a larger number of countries were compared, the picture is one of stability rather than change. Finally, results from hierarchical regressions combining survey data with new institutional data, confirm previous findings – employment commitment is still decidedly stronger within more generous welfare regimes, also when job quality is accounted for.
Esser, I.