The Subjective Perspective of Social Investment - Testing the Capacitating Impact on Subjective Wellbeing across Life Course Transitions

Heta Pöyliö , European University Institute & University of Turku

This article tests whether the increase in social investment (SI) service provision is associated with improved subjective wellbeing (SWB) at the individual level. The intuition is simple: if commonly understood stressful life-course transitions are being eased by SI welfare services, this should be corroborated in terms of life satisfaction. The social investment turn across Europe has strengthened the in-kind services that provide ‘secure functionings’ to specific target groups but also to the wider population. This emphasis on capacitation is built atop of the traditional compensatory provision. By focusing on two critical life-stages: (1) family formation and (2) the transition into retirement, the paper tests whether and how SI policies impact life satisfaction of relevant target groups directly and those at-risk of such transition. Because SI service provision alleviates intergenerational care responsibilities of grandparents and offspring, whether this results in indirect impacts on subjective wellbeing among these groups is also examined. By linking individual life satisfaction data from European Social Survey (2002-2020) with social policy expenditure data from OECD, this paper examines the within-country changes in the association. The preliminary results from linear regression analyses demonstrate that the increase in social spending on families and old-age harbour wider positive implications on life satisfaction, also outside the target populations. Particularly positive is the impact of family services on “grandparents” SWB. However, the impact of the service provision increase is found positive only when minimum income benefits for families and pensions are adequately safeguarding from poverty.

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 Presented in Session 33. Policy Effects on Health and Mortality