The exceptionally high union density rates in Denmark, Finland and Sweden are attributed to a particular form of voluntary unemployment insurance, known as the Ghent system. Heavily subsidized by the state and administered by union funds, it strongly motivates workers to become union members. Belgium has a partial Ghent system: while unemployment insurance is compulsory, trade unions retain an important role in the provision of benefits. Belgian union density is at an intermediate level; but as in other Ghent countries, its level is currently higher than in the 1970s. This article argues that the Belgian institutional set-up provides stronger incentives for manual workers in industry with lower educational attainment and a past unemployment record. In Denmark, Finland and Sweden, the Ghent system recruits workers across different occupations and educational levels. However, its appeal seems to have lessened over recent years, particularly among younger workers.
The European Employment Strategy (EES) emerged in the early 1990s under the influence of an acute rise in unemployment and the introduction of economic and monetary union (EMU). Its purpose is to foster convergence towards lower unemployment and higher employment. This article considers these outcomes over a longer time frame and in a broader geographical context than previous studies have done. Overall, outcomes in the EU-15 improved and converged since the introduction of EES. Comparisons suggest that these developments do not merely reflect long-term or international trends. The recent crisis, with deteriorating and divergent outcomes, might signal the start of a new EES cycle.
L'Europe se fera dans les crises et elle sera la somme des solutions apportées à ces crises.[Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.] (Monnet, 1976) * The authors, whilst taking full responsibility for the accuracy of the text, would like to thank Jelle Visser and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Public social expenditure is the most commonly used proxy variable for the size of the welfare state. While this indicator has certain limitations for welfare analysis, 1 both conceptual (Esping-Andersen, 1990) and methodological (De Deken and Kittel, 2007) spending clearly matters, not least in a context of general budget austerity. The share of public social spending in GDP ranges widely across OECD and EU countries, as shown in Figure 10.1. Average social expenditure in the OECD rose rather strongly from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s, and then remained rather stable up to the Great Recession. Through its major impact on both expenditure and GDP, the current crisis has once again driven up social expenditure levels. Among industrialized countries there is a well-documented tendency for public social spending levels to converge (Wilensky, 1975, 2002; Schmitt and Starke, 2011; Caminada et al., 2010). In the EU, that convergence has grown stronger since the recent crisis (European Commission, 2012b). This is quite remarkable, in the light of the gaps that opened between EU member states in terms of (un) employment and overall living standards.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.