Welfare states, poverty and living standards in Europe two decades after EU enlargement
I am currently conducting research on trends in poverty and living standards in Europe in two decades since the EU enlargement of 2004. This work starts from the observation that has now been greater change in relation to poverty trends in European nations than was recognised in scholarship of a decade ago, where narratives emphasising ‘disappointing poverty trends’ and stasis dominated. Yet, where there has been change this is only partially understood. Also, the work represents an attempt to take seriously and better understand the living standard trajectories in Central and Eastern European countries. Again, these remain inadequately understood and – remarkably – these nations continue to be omitted from some major comparative studies. My interests include:
- How best to understand changes in poverty and living standards over this period, especially in the nations of Central and Eastern Europe;
- How labour markets, housing systems and demographic profiles shape poverty risks in Europe. How the performance of welfare states has evolved, and how nations that have undertaken significant welfare reforms have performed in relation to poverty and living standards;
- New and emerging risks associated with poverty and deprivation across Europe (such as risks associate with housing).
Welfare reform in times of crisis, especially in Liberal nations
Faced with the apparent prospect of ongoing recommodification, I am interested in the potential for progressive change, especially in times of crisis and in the Liberal welfare states in particular.
Key outputs from this area of work were a Special Issue on COVID-19 and Social Policy, published in Social Policy & Administration, and co-edited with Daniel Béland, Peter Whiteford, Bea Cantillon and Amílcar Moreira and a recently-published Themed Section on the Cost-of-Living Crisis and Social Policy in Social Policy & Society (co-edited with Daniel Béland, Bea Cantillon, Bent Greve and Amílcar Moreira). These crises, perhaps especially in the Liberal nations, created new possibilities for expansionary social policy reform and I am interested in the lessons of these experiences for the prospects of future change.
Social security, work and poverty in the UK
My primary focus in relation to poverty and social security is on extent of poverty amongst working households, and what combination of policy instruments is most appropriate to tackle in-work poverty. I am interested in:
- How the roll-out of Universal Credit will affect in-work poverty in the UK;
- How greater income security can be provided to social security claimants, including through the provision of a basic income, and whether this influences labour market activity;
- The extent to which rising housing costs, and changes in housing tenure patterns, are exacerbating poverty, and what might be done about this;
- The distributional consequences of employment-centred welfare reform, when both social security and employment outcomes are considered, and
- How subjective measures might advance our understanding of the consequences of employment-centred welfare reform.
Conceptualisation and measurement of poverty, deprivation and living standards
Much of my early research focused on the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty. In particular, my PhD thesis explored the contribution that the capability approach might make to the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty in rich nations, and was comprised of a combination of conceptual analysis and empirical analysis of the British Household Panel Survey.
As part of the conceptual work, I argued that a multidimensional, capability-inspired framework could provide a more persuasive account of the experience of poverty and deprivation than the dominant ‘relative-deprivation’ tradition of Peter Townsend. The empirical work examined the relationship between resources and functionings for different individuals and groups, across different dimensions, and over time.
In my more recent work, I continue to find that making sense of living standards and that the role that policy plays in shaping these requires taking concepts and measures seriously. In a recent paper in Social Indicators Research, Marco Pomati, Mark Stephens and I argued that the two component indicators of the EU’s Severe Housing Deprivation measure are not only weakly related, but that they are related to different determinants, appearing to validate, in analytical work, quite different theoretical concerns. This paper makes recommendations for the monitoring of housing conditions by the European Commission.
I have ongoing research interested in:
My work in this area informs ongoing work on poverty and subjective well-being (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation) and examining poverty and living standards in Europe.