Types of Public Family Support: A Cluster Analysis of 15 European Countries

Abstract

Departing from Korpi's distinction between dual earner and general family support (Korpi 2000), this paper uses recent family policy indicators to detect types of public family support in the European Union. Using cluster-analytical tools and including a wide set of countries and indicators, the chosen approach allows for capturing pluralistic policy orientations. Results suggest five distinct family policy clusters: a general family support cluster, a dual earner support cluster, a pluralistic policy cluster, and two low support clusters. In a second step, the suggested solution is validated using the clusters as a framework to explain international variation in female labor-market participation, fertility, gender equality, and child poverty.

Acknowledgements

I thank Claus Wendt, Michaela Pfeifer, and Fred Thompson for helpful comments on earlier versions of this work. I am also grateful to Miriam Ott who helped collecting the institutional indicators as well as Ryan DeLaney who did an extensive proofreading of the manuscript. The research reported here has received financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Notes

For an overview of existing father-friendly legislation across Western Europe see, for instance, Smith and Williams (2007).

For data sources please refer to Table 2.

Divergent opinions about the effect of leave on women's labor-market attachment exist. See Kangas and Roostgaard (2007: 245) for a brief overview.

Since leave entitlements vary with the number of children in France, the average duration and benefit-level per child was calculated.

For the general family-support dimension, flat-rate benefits were calculated as percentages of wages using the national median wage as a reference. As several countries provide unpaid leave (for example Greece, Portugal, and Ireland), duration was multiplied by 1 in these countries in order to preserve differences with regard to duration.

Researchers have also expressed concerns over professional childcare, especially during the child's first year (see for instance Belsky 2001; Brooks-Gunn et al. 2002).

This approach has been used before; see for instance De Henau et al. (2006) or Plantenga et al. (2009).

In 2007, parental leave was reformed considerably in Germany: the means-tested flat-rate benefit was replaced by an unconditional wage replacement of 67 per cent (up to a ceiling of [euro]1,800 per month), and benefit duration was cut to 14 months, including two non-transferable months for the partner not assuming the bulk of leave, usually the father (Henninger et al. 2008). As institutional data used in this paper refers mainly to the year 2005, however, these changes have not been taken into account here.

The national childcare strategy of the Labour government constitutes a major shift in policy, as the state has taken responsibility for the development of childcare. However, lone mothers are supported, but support for the dual earner model is still modest (Rake 2001).

For data sources please refer to Table 3.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monika Mischke

Monika Mischke is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Siegen and a doctoral student at the University of Mannheim. She graduated in sociology at the Free University of Berlin in 2006 and has worked as a researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) between 2006 and 2010. Her main research interests are comparative welfare state analysis, family policies, and social inequality.