Mapping Different Worlds of Eco-Welfare States

Katharina Zimmermann and Paolo Graziano
Additional contact information
Katharina Zimmermann: Department of Socioeconomics, University of Hamburg, 20354 Hamburg, Germany
Paolo Graziano: Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies, 27100 Padova, Italy

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-20

Abstract: Attention towards topics such as environmental pollution, climate change, or biodiversity has strongly increased in the last years. The struggles to balance market powers and ecological sustainability somehow evoke memories of the early days of European welfare states, when social protection emerged as a means to prevent industrial capitalism from disruptive social tensions due to excessive social inequalities. In fact, social and environmental crises are inseparably intertwined, as ecological destruction is likely to be followed by social deprivation, and a lack of social security can be a crucial barrier for ecologically sustainable action. Our paper seeks to provide a step towards such an integrated perspective by studying problem pressure and public interventions in the area of green welfare, that is, in social and environmental protection. By using available data from Eurostat and Environmental Performance Index (EPI) databases, we contrast environmental and social performances to detect links between the social and the ecological dimension in these areas and unearth different configurations of green welfare among European countries. Our findings suggest that there are different “worlds of eco-welfare states” which only partially overlap with the more conventional “world of welfare states” but show how the Nordic countries are in the relatively-better performing cluster.

Keywords: green welfare; eco-welfare states; cluster analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1819/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1819/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:5:p:1819-:d:326361

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().