The Welfare State and Human Well-Being Around the World: A Cross-National Analysis

Does the welfare state affect human well-being outside the developed OECD world? For decades scholars have assessed the impact of the welfare state on a variety of outcomes, largely economic and social (for reviews see Kenworthy, Social Forces. 77:1119–1039, 1999; Kenworthy & Pontusson, Perspectives in Politics. 3:449–471, 2005; O’Connor, Review of Behavioral Economics. 4:397–420, 2017). While more recent focus has shifted to the impact of welfare programs on human well-being, this literature has suffered from several shortcomings. First, there has been an overriding focus on developed core OECD countries. Second, the primary outcome of interest has been on subjective well-being (life satisfaction, happiness). In this paper, we try to address these shortcomings to some extent. First, we extend the analysis to a wider and more diverse sample of countries. Second, we focus on a range of aspects of human well-being beyond life satisfaction. Third, we rely on a new measure of welfare impact that goes beyond mere overall spending—expert survey based coding of social security protections from the global Quality of Government 2021 data set. We find that in our sample of countries, this welfare measure exerts a positive and significant effect on a range of well-being outcomes. Implications for the study of the welfare state and well-being are discussed.

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Notes

The measure ranges from 1–10, and countries are scored in the following manner based on the following question: To what extent do social safety nets provide compensation for social risks? 1. Social safety nets do not exist. Poverty is combated hardly at all, or only ad hoc. 4. Social safety nets are rudimentary and cover only few risks for a limited number of beneficiaries. The majority of the population is at risk of poverty. 7. Social safety nets are well developed, but do not cover all risks for all strata of the population. A significant part of the population is still at risk of poverty. 10. Social safety nets are comprehensive and compensate for social risks, especially nationwide health care and a well-focused prevention of poverty.

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Funding

There are no funding sources for this research.