social indicators and welfare monitoring

Abstract

"In this paper prepared for the 1999 Copenhagen Seminar for Social Progress, Gøsta Esping-Andersen reviews approaches to welfare monitoring since the 1960s. The attempt to record and measure changes in welfare over the past four decades has been influenced by a number of factors, including the changing ideological climate, practical difficulties with concepts and data, and objective changes in social conditions. Countries around the world also have different overall perspectives on welfare provision: they define welfare goals differently and have developed distinct regimes, or sets of policies and institutions, for meeting these goals. Even advanced industrial nations, for example, have differing conceptions of welfare provision, ranging from the minimalist approach of Anglo-Saxon countries to the social-democratic focus of Nordic societies. The first devotes primary attention to identifying the poor and needy, while the second is more concerned with monitoring equal access to resources among the population at large. Each of these is based on a specific theoretical approach to welfare. The first, and most prevalent, way of thinking about social policy rests on the calculation of risk. Each risk is typically identified as a separate event or state, with its own actuarial probability and defined response. This approach tends to individualize welfare issues to concentrate on discrete cases and to encourage the use of indicators such as poverty head counts, years of schooling, mortality and longevity, or unemployment rates. Although this may be adequate when societies develop along predictable lines, and risks are clearly identifiable with distinct stages of life or age categories, a concentration on risk becomes increasingly less useful as societies change in complex ways. A second way of thinking about welfare is concerned primarily with ensuring that individuals can mobilize resources in times of need. In the last analysis, it may be less important to foresee, with actuarial precision, every problem to be addressed by every individual than to create a system in which anyone affected by crisis has the means to provide an appropriate remedy. In broader terms, this implies ensuring that people can maximize their human potential. This approach should not be confused with a third current of thought that concentrates on meeting basic needs. The basic needs approach reflects a preoccupation with day-to-day survival surely a pressing concern. But subjectively expressed needs may correspond little to objectively defined needs. And focusing on basic needs does not address the central concern of those who champion the resource, or capabilities, approach which is to provide equal opportunities for every person to realize his or her own objectives."(pg iii)