New welfare has been prominent in recent European social policy debates. It involves mobilising more people into paid work, improving human capital and ensuring fairer access to opportunities. This programme is attractive to business (more workers, better human capital and reduced social conflict to enhance productivity and profitability) and to citizens (more widely accessible job-opportunities with better rewards): a relatively low-cost approach to the difficulties governments face in maintaining support and meeting social goals as inequalities widen.The general move towards 'new welfare' gathered momentum during the past two decades, given extra impetus by the 2007-9 recession and subsequent stagnation. While employment rates rose during the prosperous years before the crisis, there was no commensurate reduction in poverty. Over the same period the share of economic growth returned to labour fell, labour markets were increasingly de-regulated and inequality increased. This raises the question of whether new welfare's economic (higher employment, improved human capital) and social (better job quality and incomes) goals may come into conflict. This paper examines data for 17 European countries over the period 2001 to 2007. It shows that new welfare is much more successful at achieving higher employment than at reducing poverty, even during prosperity, and that the approach pays insufficient attention to structural factors, such as the falling wage share, and to institutional issues, such as labour market deregulation.
The objective of this study was to understand global caregiver about SARS-CoV-2 vaccination for children with cancer and to provide healthcare providers with guidance to support parental decision-making. A co-designed cross-sectional mixed-methods survey was distributed to primary caregivers of children with cancer globally between April and May 2021 via several media. Caregivers were asked to rate the importance of vaccine-related questions and the median scores were ranked. Principal Component Analysis was conducted to identify underlying dimensions of caregiver concerns by World Bank income groups. Content analysis of free-text responses was conducted and triangulated with the quantitative findings. 627 caregivers from 22 countries responded to the survey with 5.3% (n = 67) responses from low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC). 184 caregivers (29%) provided free-text responses. Side effects and vaccine safety were caregivers' primary concerns in all countries. Questions related to logistics were of concern for caregivers in LMIC. A small minority of caregivers (n = 17) did not consider the survey questions important; free-text analysis identified these parents as vaccine hesitant, some of them quoting safety and side effects as main reasons for hesitancy. Healthcare providers and other community organizations globally need to provide tailored information about vaccine safety and effectiveness in pediatric oncology settings. Importantly, continued efforts are imperative to reduce global inequities in logistical access to vaccines, particularly in LMIC.
IntroductionSARS-CoV-2 has led to an unprecedented pandemic where vulnerable populations, such as those with childhood cancer, face increased risk of morbidity and mortality. COVID-19 vaccines are a critical intervention to control the pandemic and ensure patient safety. This study explores global caregiver's perspectives related to COVID-19 immunization in the context of pediatric cancer management.MethodsA mixed methods survey was developed based on consensus questions with iterative feedback from global medical professional and caregiver groups and distributed globally to caregivers of childhood cancer via electronic and paper routes. We present qualitative findings through inductive content analysis of caregiver free-text responses.ResultsA total of 184 participants provided qualitative responses, 29.3% of total survey respondents, with a total of 271 codes applied. Codes focused on themes related to safety and effectiveness (n = 95, 35.1%), logistics (n = 69, 25.5%), statements supporting or opposing vaccination (n = 55, 20.3%), and statements discussing the limited availability of information (n = 31, 11.4%). Within the theme of safety and effectiveness, safety itself was the most commonly used code (n = 66, 24.4% of total segments and 69.5% of safety and effectiveness codes), followed by risks versus benefits (n = 18, 18.9% of safety and effectiveness codes) and efficacy (n = 11, 11.6%).DiscussionThis study provides insights to guide healthcare professionals and caregiver peers in supporting families during the complex decision-making process for COVID-19 vaccination. These findings highlight the multidimensionality of concerns and considerations of caregivers of children with cancer regarding COVID-19 vaccination and suggest that certain perspectives transcend borders and cultures.
in-depth analysis of eight EU-members, for which there is additional data, based on questionnaires filled by national experts. The first two chapters provide an interesting overview on normative views of adulthood and transition trends in Europe, which allows us to understand how factual transitions may influence normative views on adulthood or vice versa. The remaining chapters detail young adults' limitations in terms of finding secure employment, a stable income, housing and childcare, and how current social policies address these factors, each chapter revealing differences between countries.While the strengths of this study are undoubtedly the wealth of information and the contextualization of young adults' transitions, the study could perhaps have attempted to re-evaluate the most traditional definitions of adulthood in the conclusions chapter, particularly in view of their policy recommendations. The authors consider that defining adulthood is a 'risky affair' (p. 9) opting instead, following the mainstream demographic literature, for using broad age categories to frame and interpret the traditional passages into adulthood. Moreover, the separate analysis of each event, assumingly due to methodological and interpretative reasons, contrasts with their own and other authors' observation of progressive de-standardization of the transition to adulthood (Rindfuss 1991) and heterogeneity of transitions between individuals and countries (Billari and Liefbroer 2010). A more holistic view of the passages in the conclusions chapter would have, perhaps, conveyed a less standardized idea of the transition to adulthood, thus stressing the complexities and degree of relatedness between transitions. This should prove important for the development of reconciliation policies. Similarly, to better explain country and policy differences, the conclusions would have benefitted from a summary integrating the adulthood passages and policy paradigms, as done in Billari (2004: 21). Lastly, whilst the book's aim is to provide a multilevel and comparative overview of the transition to adulthood, the descriptive nature of the book is somewhat surprising, given the large number of countries studied and modern statistical techniques for integrating micro and macro levels of analysis.Overall, in a context of high economic uncertainty and youth dissatisfaction, this book draws timely attention to young adults' struggles and the failure and successes of EU social policies to address their risks. The wealth of information presented in each chapter and the clarity of the writing offers readers an important and valuable source on how young individuals experience each passage of adulthood in Europe.
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