Many climate change mitigation policies face public opposition, especially when they impose visible costs on households and are perceived as unfairly regressive. This country-comparative study examines specific social policy instruments that may help build public support for increasing fossil fuel taxes in Europe. Using multilevel modeling with data from the European Social Survey and the Social Policy Indicators database, we find that higher levels of means-tested social assistance are positively associated with greater public support for fossil fuel taxes. More specifically, means-tested social assistance appears to promote support by reducing self-experienced economic hardship and lessening value conflicts among individuals with strong eco-social values. Policies that raise the minimum income floor in society thus seem crucial for fostering eco-social synergies and strengthening public support for government-led climate action and decarbonization efforts.

This chapter examines global trends in old-age income, wealth, and poverty, especially highlighting disparities between high-income countries and the Global South. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study (2023), complemented by other sources, we especially analyse trends in poverty rates distinguishing relative, anchored and multidimensional poverty. Our results indicate that robust pension systems in affluent countries seem to protect large fractions of older people from poverty, while limited coverage in less prosperous countries leaves many vulnerable. Our trend analysis further reveals substantial country differences in poverty rates, which often seem to be related to changes in the pension systems. Wealth distribution and multidimensional factors, such as health and living conditions, are essential in understanding economic security in later life, particularly for low-income households in the Global South. Policy must consider the varied challenges faced by ageing populations across socio-economic contexts.

Decarbonization, environmental protection, and sustainable development are more topical than ever. Despite long-standing debates about the regressive profile of environmental taxes, the welfare state’s role in buffering adverse distributive impacts of climate policy is largely unexplored. We examine if social policy shields households from falling into poverty due to environmental taxes tied to consumption. We specifically focus on the importance of income replacement in social insurance and social assistance. To enable detailed assessments of the distributive outcomes of environmental policy, we impute environmental taxes into the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Our comparative analysis of 26 European countries indicates that the welfare state protects households from relative income poverty due to environmental taxes. Moreover, comparisons between educational groups suggest that both social insurance and social assistance play different yet complementary roles in reducing socio-economic gradients in poverty related to environmental taxes.

Welfare states differ greatly in the extent to which they provide social protection for various age-related social risks and set different priorities between needs associated with childhood, maturity, and old age. This chapter aims to explore and defend an ideal of age universalism in social insurance, according to which the degree of income replacement should be similar across age-related social risks. The argument suggests pragmatic advantages of age-balanced social insurance, showing that it tends to provide higher levels of income replacement for age-related risks throughout the life cycle and achieve more favourable social outcomes in all age groups, including poverty rates, trust, and subjective well-being.

Housing benefits differ substantially across countries. In this paper, we apply power resource theory, developed primarily in relation to the emergence and subsequent expansion of social citizenship, to housing policy. The purpose is to analyse the political determinants of housing benefits, and particularly the role of left parties and the partisan mobilization of labour. The empirical analyses are based on new housing benefit data for 31 affluent democracies from the period 2001–2018. The results of a series of fixed effects pooled time-series regressions show that the strength of left government is positively associated with the size of housing benefits. However, the positive influence of left cabinets is conditional on the relative size of rental housing and the fractionalization of the party system. Our findings highlight the need to combine actor-oriented explanations of the welfare state with theories about the corporatist power structures of society.

This essay was delivered as a speech by the outgoing president of the Swedish Sociological Association in connection with the bi-annual Sociologidagarna in Uppsala 16-18 March 2022. Guitar playing and sociology has many things in common, including how competence and skills are achieved. Based on everyday observations, four generalised stages in learning are outlined, that apply equally to guitar playing and sociology. To clearly differentiate each successive stage in the learning process, innovative analogies to bird life was used. In chronological order from novice to genius, the following separate stages of learning were identified: the birdhouse, the magpie, the lyrebird, and the nightingale. The birdhouse is characterised by surprise, confusion and almost total inability or ignorance, whereas the most prominent features of the magpie is curiosity, high energy and repetition. The lyrebird is occupied by imitation, self-centring and identity creation, whereas the nightingale shows clear signs of excellence and genuine innovation. Few guitar players and sociologists make the move from lyrebird to nightingale.

There is no single body in Sweden that is responsible for monitoring all public socialspending and analysing its effectiveness. Instead, a number of separate governmentagencies collect and monitor data on public social spending, such as Statistics Sweden(SCB), the National Board of Health and Welfare, and the Social Insurance Agency. Someagencies do this as part of their legal responsibility for collecting official statistics; othersare mandated by the government to collect data on public social spending and monitorvarious aspects of policies in their particular field of authority. The SCB co-ordinates thecollection of official statistics and provides advice on data-collection methods. However,the detailed content of the data is up to each government agency to decide.