European Journal of Social Security

ISSUE 14(4): SPECIAL ISSUE ON CHILD MAINTENANCE SCHEMES IN FIVE COUNTRIES

On pages 340, 341, and 342 in the final article, entitled ‘A Comparative Analysis of Child Maintenance Schemes in Five Countries by Christine Skinner, Mia Hakovirta and Jacqueline Davidson, it is stated that in regards to the low income vignettes for Iceland, the two non resident parents (Mr Paul and Mr Forest) would be assessed as having no capacity to pay child maintenance and their maintenance obligation would be set at zero. Th is is misleading. In fact, non-resident parents would be expected to pay at least the minimal amount of child maintenance regardless of their income level or whether they were receiving social assistance benefi ts. Th erefore, they would never be assessed as having ‘no capacity to pay’ based on an income measure alone.

Under the social investment paradigm, a child-centred investment strategy has been developed. The mainstay of such a strategy is the provision of childcare services, which are expected to increase maternal employment rates, further children's human capital and mitigate social inequalities in early life. In this article, I critically assess the child-centred investment strategy and question whether childcare services in European countries are, in their current state, up to the task of producing the anticipated benefits. The argument I develop is fairly simple: in order to be effective, childcare services should be provided for all social groups, and in particular for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Drawing on recent EU-SILC data, I show that in all but one country this condition is not met: childcare services are often taken up at low or moderate levels, and children from low-income families use them to a much lesser extent than those from high-income families. In order to overcome these childcare deficits, countries should pursue a consistent investment strategy which entails increasing both the supply of childcare and employment opportunities for all social groups. This will require huge budgetary efforts for most member states.

This paper investigates whether there is a convergence in welfare state programmes among the ‘old’ EU Member States. To identify such trends, the study relies on net pension and net unemployment replacement rates, as well as on public social expenditure data. Empirically, a sample of 14 economies (EU-15 excluding Luxembourg) between 1980 and 2005 is used. The empirical findings reveal the presence of a convergence process, driven by a strong catch-up in social protection levels in the southern Member States. Furthermore, convergence in replacement rates is substantially less pronounced than convergence in public social expenditure. In sum, the results indicate that the converging trend of public social expenditure and unemployment benefits has continued in advanced industrialised countries and over time. These findings confirm and expand on earlier studies (Caminada et al. 2001; Starke et al. 2008; Schmitt and Starke 2011).

This paper explores how the protection of property rights can serve as a limit to deteriorating social security protection. The protection of property rights under Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), often combined with the right to fair trial under Article 6(1), has proved a valuable legal instrument in social security matters when the respective rights seem to be threatened by potential changes in social security law. This article therefore focuses on the judicial protection provided when a social security claim is brought to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and certain selected national courts. If the right to social security actually provides a more targeted content with regard to the status quo of an individual protected under a social security system, then what are the consequences for law and juridical practice? Jurisprudence and relevant case law at a European level under the ECHR focuses attention on the obligations of the contracting Member States in respect of the protection of social security rights, classified under the Article 1 1P of the ECHR.

Since the early 1990s we have seen pension reforms in a large number of advanced welfare states, and the most impressive reforms have happened in countries with Bismarckian pension systems. Some of these countries have adopted a particularly innovative pension model which is based on pay-as-you-go financing and benefits that are a function of lifetime contributions. The approach is known as the notional defined contribution (NDC) model. This article examines what has happened to the public pension systems in Sweden and Italy after they were among the first to adopt the NDC model in the mid-1990s. By focusing on the degree of political consensus and conflict in the national pension policy debate since the NDC formula was introduced, the article offers an empirical assessment of the degree of political sustainability enjoyed by these landmark reforms. The paper shows that reform processes do not end with legislation. For reforms to have a lasting impact, whether they are left to work as intended also matters. The ‘post-adoption’ policy trajectory depends on a number of factors related to policy design, economic context and political ownership.

In the period July–December 2012 both the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a number of important rulings that are worth reporting. The present overview discusses four CJEU judgments, two dealing with the rules determining the applicable legislation (Partena ASBL v Les Tartes de Chaumont-Gistoux SA and Format) and two involving benefits aimed at promoting access to employment (Caves Krier and Prete). In addition, the overview covers the notable ECtHR decision judgment in Ramaer and van Willigen v. the Netherlands, which seems to mark the end of a long legal battle that Dutch pensionado's have fought against the introduction of compulsory health insurance in 2006.