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Previous research implies that the extent of welfare state regime provision plays an important indirect role in the prevalence of loneliness in later life. The aim of this study was therefore to assess the association between quality of living conditions and level of social integration indictors and the absence of loneliness in five different welfare regimes. By incorporating welfare state regimes as a proxy for societal-level features, we expanded the micro-level model of loneliness suggesting that besides individual characteristics, welfare state characteristics are also important protective factors against loneliness. The data source was from the European Social Survey, ESS round 7, 2014, from which we analysed 11,389 individuals aged 60 and over from 20 countries. The association between quality of living conditions, level of social integration variables and the absence of loneliness was analysed using multivariate logistical regression treating the welfare regime variable as a fixed effect. Our study revealed that absence of loneliness was strongly associated with individual characteristics of older adults, including self-rated health, household size, feeling of safety, marital status, frequency of being social as well as number of confidants. Further, the Nordic as well as Anglo-Saxon and Continental welfare regimes performed better than the Southern and Eastern regimes when it came to absence of loneliness. The interaction terms in our final analyses showed that the association between welfare state regimes and absence of loneliness was not independent of the included background variables and the influence of the variables varied across different social protection systems. We conclude that the understanding of loneliness is linked to the social policy systems of particular countries.

Biological rhythms, and especially the sleep/wake cycle, are frequently disrupted during senescence. This draws attention to the study of aging-related changes in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the master circadian pacemaker. The authors here compared the SCN of young and old mice, analyzing presynaptic terminals, including the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic network, and molecules related to the regulation of GABA, the main neurotransmitter of SCN neurons. Transcripts of the alpha3 subunit of the GABAA receptor and the GABA-synthesizing enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase isoform 67 (GAD67) were analyzed with real-time RT-PCR and GAD67 protein with Western blotting. These parameters did not show significant changes between the 2 age groups. Presynaptic terminals were identified in confocal microscopy with synaptophysin immunofluorescence, and the GABAergic subset of those terminals was revealed by the colocalization of GAD67 and synaptophysin. Quantitative analysis of labeled synaptic endings performed in 2 SCN subregions, where retinal afferents are known to be, respectively, very dense or very sparse, revealed marked aging-related changes. In both subregions, the evaluated parameters (the number of and the area covered by presynaptic terminals and by their GABAergic subset) were significantly decreased in old versus young mice. No significant differences were found between SCN tissue samples from animals sacrificed at different times of day, in either age group. Altogether, the data point out marked reduction in the synaptic network of the aging biological clock, which also affects GABAergic terminals. Such alterations could underlie aging-related SCN dysfunction, including low-amplitude output during senescence.

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During the 1990s, the Nordic welfare states, notably Finland and Sweden, faced serious challenges that triggered a number of welfare restructuring processes. This article focuses on the political determinants of these processes, or, more exactly, it analyses changes in partisan welfare policy positions in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1970 and 2003. The main goal of the article is to chart possible changes in party positions on social policy. Has there been a decline in pro‐welfare attitudes during the period 1970–2003, and if so, how are these changes related to ideological and institutional factors? The data analysed in the article consists of election programmes, and more specifically, textual utterances concerning the welfare state. The results indicate a relatively high degree of stability in partisan support for welfare state expansion and investments in social justice, while market‐type solutions to social problems, on the other hand, have become more salient among parties, especially in the Right. The findings suggest that parties still differ from each other as to welfare‐political positions, indicating that Social Democratic and left‐wing parties remain the foremost defenders of the ‘Nordic Welfare Model’, whereas the Right has become more hesitant towards welfare state expansion.

This article investigates the development of two forms of public spending on families, as well as their role for child poverty in 22 European countries during the period 2006-2015. It uses aggregated data on child poverty from Eurostat and data relating to public spending on families from the OECD SOCX database. It analyses the association between child poverty and public family spending on cash benefits and in-kind benefits, respectively. The findings show a stable growth in the GDP-related and real levels of spending on both cash benefits and benefits in kind, although spending on cash benefits have been more exposed to cost containment than spending on inkind benefits. Furthermore, spending on benefits in kind was found to be more efficient for curbing child poverty than spending on cash benefits, even after controlling for unemployment, family structure, the general standard of living, as well as welfare institutional configurations. However, the efficiency of public family spending declined over the studied period. Moreover, the relative significance of public family spending for child poverty, in comparison to structural factors (such as unemployment), varied according to which spending measure that was used.