Read the full publication in the Journal of European Social Policy (JESP).

New paper with Garmina Singh and Minna van Gerven, in Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10242589251385915

Background: The concept of resilience in familial and social contexts has gained prominence in academic and policy discussions. However, the interplay between family life and social inequalities, and how these relate to each other in the resilience literature, has yet to be documented.

Objective: This scoping review addresses this gap by analysing 250 articles published between 1998 and 2023. We compare the concept of resilience as applied in family and social resilience studies through four constitutive elements: (1) the unit of analysis, (2) definitions, (3) types, and (4) the risks, outcomes, and explanatory factors that are examined empirically.

Results: While both perspectives study individuals’ resilience, the emphasis in family resilience is on families, whereas social resilience studies focus more on communities and societies. Both perspectives emphasize the centrality of risks in defining resilience, yet family resilience scholarship seeks solutions within the family, while social resilience highlights community dynamics. Additionally, family resilience studies explore topics related to family-specific risks and resources, while social resilience studies examine external risks and resources.

Conclusions: The family resilience scholarship follows the clinical tradition in the resilience literature, viewing families as a separate entity that is resourceful and agentic. Socioeconomic risks are recurrent themes in social resilience literature, but not in family resilience.

Contribution: Understanding resilience through the lens of family inequalities in socioeconomic contexts can bridge these two perspectives. Incorporating factors such as labour market dynamics, family transitions, and educational attainment into definitions of risks, outcomes, and explanatory factors of resilience can enhance this integration.

Five blindspots in reform studies of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy.

At breakneck speed, with a very short deadline, we delivered the work, and a report (available online). The report had some interesting findings, we think, and demonstrated again how important the accessibility, affordability and quality of childcare policies are.

However, our commissioned focus was very much on reform studies, and in particular impact assessments with very strong research designs aim to isolate the causal effect. The value of such studies is indisputable, but a tradeoff is that these reforms studies tend to be empirically narrow. We kept wondering: “What are we missing?”.

So, we reflected on five blindspots:

Blindspot A: The context-specific nature of reform studies.

The research design of reform studies explicitly seeks to exclude the influence of ‘confounding’ or contextual factors. Consequently, such studies generally focus on a single country, and are less able to explain how to increase effectiveness depends on its interplay with other institutional and structural conditions.

Blindspot B: The limited focus on reducing inequality in the use and benefits of ECEC.

It is well established that parents with higher levels of education and income are more likely to enrol their children in ECEC. Yet, reform studies are silent on the degree of cross-country inequality in ECEC use. Consequently, which aspects of ECEC policy lead to an increase or decrease in inequality in ECEC use remains unknown.

Blindspot C: The focus on short-term outcomes.

A substantial share of studies in the ECEC reform database examined the immediate and short-term effects of policy changes. Only a few reform studies included in the database have examined how long it takes for implemented policy reforms to have an effect.

Blindspot D: The focus on individual-level rather than macro-level outcomes.

Reform studies focus on individual-level outcomes, which facilitates causal inference but overlooks higher-order outcomes and thus the relationship between ECEC and important societal developments.

Blindspot E: Various forms of publication bias.

Very few studies reported on ineffective reforms, and only a handful of studies examined fathers.

Countries known for extensive provision of ECEC were overrepresented. This means that the evidence base for the revision of the Barcelona targets might be the weakest for those countries that might be furthest away from achieving them.

In the conclusion, we critically reflect on our own role in taking on this commissioned work, the importance that policy makers involve academics already at the design stage of the tender/commissioned work, and the importance of methodological pluralism.

The social partners often attain a more central role in decision-making during social or economic crises. This article examines whether this held true in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands during the COVID-19 pandemic. These are countries with strong institutionalised power relations. It assesses whether the crisis affected institutional stability and social partner representation, referred to as crisis corporatism. Drawing on 30 interviews with representatives of social partner organisations and government agencies, as well as labour market experts, we demonstrate strong institutional stability and path dependence in industrial relations during the crisis. While Sweden’s institutionalised power relations remained stable, Finland and the Netherlands experienced temporary shifts, with governments bypassing the social partners on health-related issues. The health-care sector and precarious workers emerged as especially vulnerable.

I demonstrate that single parents in dual-earner societies have more difficulties to keep up with typical incomes, increasing their poverty risks. Extensive #ECEC and #income #protection help to level this playing field.

The Figure above shows the a key finding. In countries with low defamilization (childcare, left panel), a rise of dual-earner households is associated with an increase in poverty among single parents, but not among #couples with children. With more childcare, these associations disappear (right panel).

The same findings are reported for decommodification (income protection).

I think that the relevance of this paper for theory and policy is twofold.

In terms of #theory, the findings are in line with the work challenging that poverty is mostly related to the individual characteristics of the poor. Instead, poverty is relational.

Poverty cannot be solely explained by reference to individuals’ own “socioeconomic background, family composition, and “policy context, but also requires reference to the #economic activity and composition of other households in society.

In terms of policy, supporting high employment rates has long been seen as an effective strategy against poverty. However, the findings show rising employment also represents a displacement in who benefits from employment and who is disadvantaged by the increase in employment of others.

Thus, policies for work-family reconciliation and income protection are particularly important in a dual-earner society, to keep groups that are not—or cannot be—in a dual-earner household from poverty.

The paper is part of a special issue (open access untill the end of the year!), with a great group of authors all focus on single parents.

This Thursday, on 1 December, the launch of this special issue will be underscored with a public event hosted by the Brookings institute, on “A comparative perspective on policies to support single-parent families”

Sign up here: https://www.brookings.edu/events/a-comparative-perspective-on-policies-to-support-single-parent-families

The conceptualisation and measurement of benefit coverage is muddled with considerable confusion. In this forum contribution, we propose a new consolidated framework for the analysis of benefit coverage. Three sequential steps in measurement are suggested, involving the calculation of coverage rates, eligibility rates and take-up rates in social protection. Each step of the analysis focuses on particular aspects of programme legislation and implementation, and together the new framework will substantially improve the possibilities of research to inform policymaking. We provide an empirical illustration of our approach based on Swedish data, and highlight how our new consolidated framework for analysing benefit coverage provides a reorientation of the research agenda on benefit coverage.

This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children’s development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women’s empowered roles.

Colleagues had some very nice things to say about the book:

“This engaging collection gathers theoretical and empirical insights from leading family policy experts. The authors – representing diverse countries, disciplines, and methods – bring to life the volume’s innovative conceptual framework, which is organized around policy institutions, both public and private.  The volume closes with a call for new lines of research that should inform family policy scholars for years to come.” — Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

“Featuring exciting contributors from a range of often-siloed scholarly disciplines, countries and cultures, this Handbook offers nuanced insights into how interacting societal inequality factors influence family policy enactment to reinforce or improve inequality outcomes across gender, class, and nations. It is ambitious, broad-reaching, and succeeds in providing a strategic view within and across nations to inspire thoughtful evidence-based policy implications to improve societies in the future.” — Ellen Ernst Kossek, Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Purdue University, USA?

“This multilevel and cross-nationally comparative perspective puts family policy at the organizational, community, national, and supranational levels into provocative context. With contributions from leading lights such as Mary Daly, Pearl Dykstra, Jennifer Hook, and Jane Jenson, this collection provides a landmark for the future of the field.” (Jason Beckfield, Harvard University, USA)

The full impact on community, work, family, and its intersections is not yet clear. As the Editorial Board of Community, Work & Family, we share a deep concern for the potential impact of this global health pandemic. We similarly stand in awe to all the communities, workers, and families doing their utmost to combat it.

In this article, we do not attempt to provide definitive answers or even recommendations to address the problems we are witnessing. We do, however, feel the need to raise a collective voice about the significant potential for increased inequality. COVID-19 is not a great leveler. In all likelihood, COVID-19 will exacerbate existing inequalities, both in its immediate consequences resulting from the drastic measures taken to contain its spread, as well as its potential long-term consequences. These inequalities may take many forms. We highlight a number of them here as they relate to this journal’s focus on community, work, and family.

Full editorial here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13668803.2020.1756568

The policy note highlights contemporary research on single parents, and reflects on its implications for social policy developments in the European Union. Three directions of thought are developed regarding single parents’ resources, employment and social policies. The aim is to expand the scope of choice among policy alternatives for policy makers. Three main points are addressed:

• The rise of shared residence urges us to reconsider the gendered nature of single parenthood, considering how to support separated fathers to be involved in their children’s life.
• Employment can come with all kinds of advantages, but earnings are often inadequate for single parents to guarantee a poverty-free existence.
• With respect to redistributive social policies, single parents’ economic position can be heavily affected by policies that are not specifically designed for single parents, or even for families with children.

Taken together, these point bring into focus, analogue to gender mainstreaming, the importance of mainstreaming family diversity.