Sustainable wellbeing in the Nordic welfare state?

RN 12 (Un-)Sustainable Consumption D.Soc.Sc. Senior Researcher Paula Saikkonen, Social Policy Research Unit

ESA conference 2017

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The starting point

• The functionalities of societies and dynamic nature

– Risk, uncertainty, unknown unknowns (e.g. Beck U, Renn O. 2008)

• Can society produce wellbeing or welfare

– without endangering environment? (Dodds 1997; Koch & al 2017; Koch & Fritz 2014)

• Recognizing and acknowledging the environmental problems

– The problem definition matters

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The welfare system and wellbeing

• The role of social security, protection and services (welfare system) in Nordic countries

– from residual forms to universalism (social insurance “for all”)

– the rate of employment high

– constant economic growth

• Wellbeing (according to Erik Allardt)

– Having (living standards, health)

– Loving (meaningful social relationship)

– Being (the possibility to be herself or himself)

– The objective and subjective wellbeing

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The research setting – focusing on least well-off

• Does the welfare system produce wellbeing to people on income support? (means-tested, last-resort financial aid in Finland) Could the system be more sustainable?

• Research material: group interviews

– Six group interviews about services and income support around Finland

– 29 Interviewees had been a long time (several years) on social assistance ( the so-called vulnerable groups)

– 10 females, 19 males, 29-68-year-old

• Qualitative content analyses (theory based)

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Analyses: only material wellbeing seem to matter in the welfare system

• Having category was a dominant one.

– Income support sets the standards for need covered; it is a baseline.

– Probably too much emphasized category in the welfare system

• Not so much possibilities in being category;

– However, some interviewees helped others in the similar positions

• To sum up: the welfare system seemed to be more interest to deliver financial aid and controlling it than the actual wellbeing of the recipients of income support. This can be a problem for the ecologically and socially sustainable wellbeing; the individual well-being is strongly related to a position of the labour market in the capitalist system, thus economic growth and consumption.

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Results

• For the recipients of income support all the categories of wellbeing were important (of course!), however, the welfare system supported mostly the having category

– Thus it missed other opportunities and the aspects of wellbeing that are especially important for recipients with the cumulated problems.

– The emphasize is more or less in activation

– “The same size fits all”, except it doesn’t

• Indeed, the lack of resources influence on social relations

– But it shouldn’t as much as it does (see Matthies & Närhi 2017)

• Consumer citizenship instead of social citizenship?

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Conclusion

• Spatial and temporal aspects – the distribution of advantages and disadvantages when aiming at better outcomes

– Social and ecological sustainability are intertwined though the period of time often is different.

– Knowledge production processes and decision-making (See Norton 2017)

• Wellbeing as a relational research object (cf. Max-Neef and theory of needs)

– More responsibilities for localities? Yet, national guidelines are necessary too.

• Universalism in the individualized world?

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Thank you!

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paula.saikkonen@thl.fi

References

Beck, U. (1996) Risk society and provident state. In S. Lash, B. Szerszynski & B. Wynne (ed.) Risk, environment & modernity.

Dodds. Steve (1997) Towards a ’science of sustainability’: Improving the way ecological economics understands human well-being. Ecologcal Economics 23 (2), 95-111.

Koch, M., Buch-Hansen, H., Fritz, M. (2017) Sgifting Priorities in Degrowth Research: An Argument for the Centrality of Human Needs. Ecological Economic 138, 74-81.

Koch, M. & Fritz M (2014) Building the Eco-social State: Do Welfare Regimes Matter? Journal of Social Policy 43 (4), 679-703.

Matthies, Aila-Leena & Närhi, Kati (2017) The Ecosocial Transition of Societies : The Contribution of Social Work and Social Policy. New York: Routledge.

Norton, Bryan G. (2017) A Situational Understandig of Environmental Values and Evaluation. Ecological Economics 138,

Renn, O. (2008) Risk Governance. Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex

World. London: Earthscan.

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