Distributive recalibration

Distributive recalibration concerns the rebalancing of welfare provision across policy clienteles and organized interests. Gains and losses associated with welfare reform are distributed unequally over time across social risks categories. Distributive recalibration thus involves policy measures aimed at rebalancing social protection in favour of the most vulnerable, and ironing out inequitable disparities between different groups. Retirement costs will rise significantly in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Small changes in the age of retirement, fertility, and immigration can potentially alter the magnitudes, but the direction is clear: there is pressing need to rewrite the contract between the generations. Across different welfare regimes there are marked variations between insiders and outsiders, in coverage among different categories of the insured, between men and women, and between generations. New cleavages are emerging due to diverging interests between old and new subjects of social risk in terms of class, gender, age, and ethnicity. This contrasts sharply with the less diversified coalitions of working- and middle-class groups in the golden age. New social risk categories, like weakly-unionized women, immigrants, part-time workers, atypical workers, and youth often find it difficult to have their voices heard. New risk policy initiatives may be obstructed by deeply entrenched policy legacies biased to insider groups.

In order to achieve distributive recalibration, policy reformers must persuade policy stakeholders to subordinate their short-term distributive interests in favour of long-term societal interests. However, a narrow policy focus exclusively concentrating on active ageing, avoiding early labour market exit, promoting part-time work, and reconciling work and family life, easily sparks political controversy in mature welfare states. In particular, to the extent that welfare recalibration caters for the well-educated families, able to adapt their life courses to increasingly demanding work and family life conditions, older cohorts are most likely to oppose welfare recalibration.