11th Economics & Finance Conference, Rome

FEMALE LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION IN WELFARE STATE MIXES: A CROSS COUNTRY EMPIRICAL STUDY

EDYTA MARCINKIEWICZ, FILIP CHYBALSKI

Abstract:

Despite growing female labour market participation and changing family structures these issues are often underappreciated in the existing literature body concerning the transformation of welfare state models. In our empirical study we try to incorporate the modern understanding of defamilisation concept identified with women’s economic autonomy and their labour force participation and merge it with other dimensions of a welfare state. As a result of our research we identify four welfare state models basing on the concept of four dimensions expressed by 26 socio-economic variables, comprising inter alia defamilisation. The empirical research is characterized by broad country coverage, as it includes 25 European countries. It employs statistical multivariate analysis methods, i.e. linear ordering as well as hierarchical clustering, and k-means clustering. The time span of our analysis covers the years 2015-2017. Our findings suggest that whereas Southern-European countries represent various welfare state models, most of the analysed Central and Eastern European countries form a separate group. Similarly, the Nordic countries, except from Iceland, belong to the same cluster. However, CEE countries and Nordic countries represent extremely divergent models in terms of defamilisation degree, but similar in terms of family policy, public-private mix, as well as welfare state generosity.

Keywords: labour market, female employment, defamilisation, welfare state

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