CIAO DATE: 07/02

Continental welfare states in Europe confronted with the end-of-career inactivity trap: A major challenge to social protection in an aging society *

Anne Marie Guillemard **

Program for the Study of Germany and Europe
March 2002

Minda De Gunzburg Center for European Studies

 

The paper is an attempt to assess continental welfare state reforms that use the window of the end-of-career inactivity trap. The question addressed is: what is the most effective way to break up the vicious circle of early exit from the labor market, which is a specific pathology of continental welfare states.

The cases of the Netherlands and Finland, two countries that have succeeded in reversing the early exit trend in recent years, prove that only a radical change in paradigms that govern social protection may turn the vicious circle of welfare without work for aging workers into a virtuous circle of active aging. In states in which reforms have focused on changing the rules and regulations that govern retirement systems, or on restricting early exit pathways, as is the case in France, they have failed to break up with the end-of-career inactivity trap.

Full Text in PDF-format (16 pages, 204Kb)

 

* Paper prepared for the conference Rethinking social protection: Citizenship and social policy in the global age at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Havard University, 26-28 January 2001.Back.

** University Paris V Sorbonne and Centre for the Study of Social Movements, 54 Bd Raspail, 75006 Paris France; e-mail: amg@ehess.fr Back.