Documents Saraceno, Chiara 13 results

"Population ageing implies the ageing of family and kinship networks. Because the absolute number of the frail elderly is set to increase, notwithstanding the increase in life expectancy in good health, a top-heavy intergenerational chain is likely both to put stress on the middle generation, and result in the older and younger generations competing for their support. Thus, issues of the redistribution of financial and time resources become relevant in the middle and younger generations when frailty emerges in the older generation. This article adopts a bi-generational perspective in order to examine not only whether social inequality affects resources available to the dependent elderly, but also whether and how a frail elderly person's demands impact differently on children's resources and life chances across gender and social classes, as well as what the impact of specific patterns of public care provision (other than healthcare) is on these inequalities."

"Published within the framework of the ‘Well-being 2030' project, co-financed by the European Commission, this new issue of Challenge Europe addresses the question of how to turn social policy into an effective productive factor, enabling well-being of Europeans and economic growth. Based on the argument that social policy can contribute to long-term sustainable growth, this multi-author publication focuses on those policies which can potentially bring the most added value to citizens' life, and includes contributions from high-level policy-makers, academics, business representatives and experts about the future of social policy in Europe. While the first chapter explores the possible synergies between growth, well-being and social policy, the second part of this EPC's policy journal turns to those policy areas where intervention can be the most effective. Finally, in a third chapter, the authors look at the EU's room of manoeuvre and propose specific policy actions."

"This article comparatively analyses how the responsibilities towards childcare needs have been framed and addressed in Italy and the Netherlands following the increase in women's labour market participation. According to the authors, the differing developments in these two countries partly disconfirm the thesis according to which facilitating family/work conciliation is at the heart of the new social policy paradigms in all Bismarckian welfare states. This concern has indeed been an explicit driver of social policy changes in the Netherlands, but not in Italy. The authors argue instead that these two countries offer evidence for the thesis that timing matters. Italy has been an ‘early bird' in changing family law and in putting in place childcare policies, but has not been able to innovate these policies when the economic and social context has changed and, in particular, has not reframed them fully as work-family conciliating policies. The Netherlands, on the other hand, was comparatively late in changing family law and developing parental leaves and childcare policies, the latter being framed largely as work-family conciliation strategies. Following the liberal cultural and political developments of the 1990s, which favoured individualisation and freedom of choice, the changes in the Netherlands systematically introduced an increasing mix of individual, family and market responsibility via both commodification supported by tax expenditure and the underpinning of the one-and-a-half breadwinner model offered by the regulation of protected part-time labour contracts. "

"The aim of this article is to articulate the concepts of familialism and defamilialization as well as their indicators to assess whether and how welfare states, or regimes, differ not only in the degree to which they are defamilialized but also in the specific familialism form. In other words, it assesses whether family responsibility in a given area (and its gender dimension) is only assumed without public policy support or, on the contrary, whether it is actively enforced by laws or supported by income transfers and time allocation. The same diversification also exists for the opposite concept, defamilialization, which may happen through positive, direct or indirect policy interventions or because of the lack of such interventions, encouraging recourse to the market. The article shows that when considering these distinctions in the analyses, the profiles of countries that are usually generically described as ‘familialistic welfare states', such as Italy and Spain in Europe or Japan and Korea in East Asia, and their similarities and differences partly differ from those that emerge when considering only a simplified familialism – defamilialization dichotomy, in so far both familialism and defamilialization may occur, and be combined, through distinct means, offering, therefore, also different options. "