Youth, family change and welfare arrangements: Is the South still so different?

A paramount mechanism for prompting social change is the succession of generations with different views about the world (Manheim 1928). This basic tenet of social sciences establishes that social change becomes a possibility when members of new cohorts come into ‘fresh contact’ with the accumulated cultural heritage. Young people have an ‘elasticity of mind’ that older people have lost. Largely static and slow changing institutions may experience rapid and dramatic transformation as a result of the ‘collective impulses’ of a new generation predisposed to new modes of thought.

In this paper, we examine the extent to which some of the features that cluster South European countries into a unique and distinctive welfare regime are blurring, prompted by changes in the interface between new attitudes, expectations and practices. Welfare arrangements in South European countries – Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain – have traditionally been characterised by the central role played by the family and its interpenetration in all areas of welfare production and distribution, particularly as regards income support and care services. A strong household micro-solidarity has provided high levels of self-perceived well-being. Within families the role of women has been pivotal, as they have often cared for children or older relatives at the expense of erratic careers or full withdrawal from the labour market.

Since recent times, the Mediterranean welfare regime, and in particular its capacity to perform as a social ‘shock absorber’ and a generous supplier of welfare activities in the informal domain, is facing challenges generated by new lifestyles and emerging social needs of young generations. In this new scenario, the various South European countries are caught in the quandary of either maintaining deep-seated cultural arrangements or promoting welfare structuring to accommodate new demands and aspirations. We contend that the pace and scope of social transformations differs across countries, thus increasing the degree of internal variation within the Mediterranean regime.

The distinctiveness of the Mediterranean Welfare Model with respect to other macro-areas of Europe has often been highlighted in rich historical and sociological accounts (Sarasa and Moreno 1996; Ferrera 1996; Petmesidou 1996). For a long time, the Mediterranean has been identified as an area where family ties were strong when compared to regions in other parts of Europe. Such differences have deep historical roots, which according to some accounts can be traced back to the Middle Ages. Despite local variations, South Europeans have tended to follow distinctive practices during their life-cycle, such as late emancipation form parental home, frequent co-residence with parents after marriage, or spatial proximity between the homes of the elderly and their offspring. These practices have kept family loyalties strong and have sustained inter-generational micro-solidarities. A child receives support and protection until he or she leaves home for good, normally for marriage, even when providing such support involves the self-sacrifice of parents (especially of mothers, from whom material and sentimental care is generously expected). Grown-up children are also supported at different stages. They can rely on parents for financial support to engage in costly investments (e.g. purchasing a house or setting a business venture), or for assistance in childcare (Reher 1998; Iglesias de Ussel et al. 2010). Families in the Mediterranean European societies also protect their younger members from economic and employment downturns, absorbing part of the effects of high unemployment.

Somewhat in return, when parents face transition to old age, children are expected to help. It is common to see grown-up children monitor the health of the parents and paying regular weekly or daily visits to them. When prolonging residential independence is no longer feasible for the elderly, living with their children has been the solution that was taken for granted within the kin group. In Spain it has always been said that the only truly poor person is one who has no family. The intergenerational solidarity is a strong social norm which seldom breaks down. It is shared by the society as a whole and learned at very young ages (Reher 1998).

The cultural and societal relevance of such practices and beliefs has no parallel in Central and Northern Europe, where family ties tend to be much weaker and the capacity of the family to function as a ‘shock absorber’ is limited. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, some authors have noted that, despite rapid economic and demographic transformations, historical gaps between family systems largely persisted (Jurado and Naldini 1996; Naldini 2003; Gal 2010). Some observers have indicated that the dividing line between strong and weak family systems is reinforced by the religious cleavage between the more ‘individualistic’ Protestant ethics and the more ‘communalistic’ Catholic and Orthodox ones (Greeley 1989). In South European societies, both the doctrines of the Catholic and Orthodox churches have traditionally placed heavy emphasis in the importance of marriage, family ties and family responsibilities for the well-being of individuals and the cohesion of social order. The cultural hegemony and influence exercised by both Catholic and Orthodox Churches were mainly responsible for delays in law reforms undertaken in other countries several decades before, such as the recognition of civil marriage, the rights of out-of-wedlock children, divorce laws, or abortion. Religious traditions have also favoured particular gendered models of care provision, where women take on full responsibility for the domestic realm.

Until recently, the strong institutionalisation of marriage in the Mediterranean world accounted for lower divorce and cohabitation rates than those found elsewhere in Europe. In Italy the divorce law was not introduced until 1970, in Portugal until 1975 and in Spain until 1981. In all these countries, ‘no fault’ divorce was only implemented a few years ago. In this context, women who decided to get divorced (and their children) often faced stigmatisation and economic hardships, which discouraged many others to follow their path. This has had a big impact in the maintenance of the proportion of single parent households at very low levels. In such conditions, single parenthood was usually brought about by the death of one parent (and seldom by divorce or out-of-wedlock birth). When it occurred, extended family networks often intervened to assist ‘broken’ families whenever needed.

Within households, the role of women has traditionally been pivotal. Women have often cared for children or older relatives at the expense of erratic careers, or full withdrawal from the labour market, especially after the birth of the first child. Even the fewer women participating in the formal labour market were expected to take on alone – or with the help of their mother or other female relatives – domestic and care-giving responsibilities. The male assumption of the ‘breadwinner’ rhetoric, together with the inclination of many women to maintain full control over the domestic domain, has too often discouraged males to get involved in domestic and care-giving activities. In these circumstances, working mothers have often been driven to hyperactivity. Such ‘superwomen’ could only undertake demanding professional activities in the labour market if they were prepared to combine them with full unpaid caring work in households (Moreno 2004).

The existence of strong family support networks and the acceptance of care responsibilities by women has significant implications for the manners social risks and needs are dealt with and, hence, upon the structuring and functioning of welfare states. The centrality of the family enables governments to rely on the family to meet the caring needs of their members and to guarantee their basic economic security, thus keeping political demand for public assistance rather low. Solidaristic expectations and resource pooling within the household have also deactivated demands for the de-segmentation of labour markets, where women and young people have traditionally operated as ‘outsiders’ occupying less desirable jobs than male breadwinners, either in the informal economy, or under short-term contractual arrangements (Andreotti et al. 2001; Karamessini 2008).

As a result of all these practices, beliefs and institutional arrangements, South European welfare has traditionally been shaped in a differential manner from other regimes. Mediterranean countries have generally been characterised by relatively low levels of social expenditure, weak state support for families, and overall limited success in alleviating poverty and overcoming social and economic disparities. Some authors argue that the fundamental joint characteristics of the Mediterranean regime still remain in place (Naldini 2003; Gal 2010). The empirical evidence gathered in this paper cast some doubts upon such a claim. Some of the distinctive features of the Mediterranean model may be changing, prompted by the rapid transformations of the family (at the level of institutions, beliefs and practices) that traditionally upheld the model of welfare arrangements. Crucial for this development is the emergence of new lifestyles and risks embodied in younger cohorts, and policy innovations to deal with them. The combination of risks and policy responses adopted across countries – and also within them – has increased the inner variability in the Mediterranean welfare regime. In the next section, significant changes in family ties, practices and attitudes are examined with relation to female labour participation and the delivery of services and care within households.

Three areas of observation can be singled out as providing relevant evidence on the dynamics of continuity and change in Western Europe and EU-15: (1) formal familism, (2) female employment, and (3) care.

Family institutions change slowly, but when they do they are likely to prompt broader societal transformations with implications for other domains – cultural, economic, political. Here we pay attention to the structural alteration of the family as an institution and the social attitudes towards new family arrangements in Southern Europe. New types of households (such as single parent, cohabiting couples and same-sex partners) are increasingly present in Southern Europe countries, although they were illegal or stigmatised only a few decades ago.

Southern families are smaller than they used to be. This is the result of the growing numbers of solo households, those with couples and no children (or with only one child) and the decreasing number of households where three or more generations live together. Marriage has been exposed to great change in Southern Europe. Crude marriage rates have declined all over the OECD countries, but this decline has been especially acute in Southern Europe.² Portugal and Spain show rates under 4 per 1,000, far below the OECD average of 5 (Table 1). This is noticeable in countries where crude marriage rates had traditionally stood above this average. The exception is Greece where this indicator still stands at 5.12, next to the OECD average. South Europeans marry much less, and a decreasing number of them rely on religious ceremonies to consecrate marriage.

Practices such as divorce and cohabitation, that were very uncommon in South European countries, have proliferated lately, especially among younger cohorts. The progress of divorce can be illustrated by the Spanish and Portuguese examples, which reach divorce rates at 2:4 and 2:5, respectively (in year 2008). Divorce rates that traditionally lagged behind those found in Central and Northern European countries stand today clearly above average.

Cohabiting couples are significantly fewer in South European countries when compared with other EU countries. In Greece only 1.7% of people 20 years or older were cohabiting in 2011. In Italy, 2% were in such a cohabitating situation, 3.3% in Spain, and 4.1% in Portugal. In all four countries figures were well below the OECD average (6.8%). But cohabitation has become more frequent among newly formed couples in all four Mediterranean countries. Differences between the young and older groups are remarkable. Cohabitation is becoming the marker for entry into first union for many Greek, Spanish and Portuguese young couples (convergence in Italy is significantly slower). This does not exclude subsequent marriage if partners decide to consolidate they relationship and to have children.

Alongside with the rise in cohabitation, there has been a significant increase in non marital childbearing, two developments that are closely related. Spain (where births out-of wedlock have reached 31%) and Portugal (36%) have converged with Central and North European countries, while Greece (5.9%), and to a lesser extent Italy (20.7%) stand clearly behind.

A complementary manner of assessing the strength of the institutional dimension of family life is to examine the development of new values and attitudes regarding family institutions. When asked how important family in their lives is, a large majority of South Europeans invariably consider family relationships very important. Most of them also hold favourable views of marriage, but in this particular case, some noteworthy differences emerge. According to European Value Survey data, in Spain and Portugal the proportion of people who think ‘marriage is an outdated institution’ comes close to proportions found in Central European countries (Table 3). The gap between generations is larger than in any other country. In Italy and Greece, negative attitudes towards marriage are less common.

Attitudes towards divorce and cohabitation have also changed significantly. Most South Europeans justify divorce or find cohabitation as perfectly ‘normal’. Table 4 shows the percentage of people within the two extreme cohorts (the young and the elderly) that justify divorce in a broad array of circumstances,³ the proportion who agree that people can live together without getting married (either agree or strongly agree), and the proportion of people who disagree with the statement, ‘long-term relationships are necessary to be happy’. Spain stands out as the country in the Mediterranean cluster where the percentage of people who find divorce and cohabitation acceptable, and of those who do not think long-term relationships are necessary to be happy, is higher. Young cohorts in Spain have clearly developed attitudes that are more similar to those found in Central and Northern European countries than to those in other Mediterranean countries (especially Italy and Greece). This is clearly seen regarding attitudes towards divorce. As much as 58% of Spaniards under 35 years of age express high levels of tolerance towards divorce, a percentage which is only higher in three Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland and Denmark).

Favourable views of cohabitation are found among most young people across the Mediterranean cluster: 91% of Spaniards under 35 agree that ‘it is all right to live together without getting married’ (68% strongly agree with the statement). In the opposite end, only 25.2% of people aged 65 and older in Spain strongly agree. In other South European countries, gaps between generations are found as well, but are less profound. In the same vein, the gap between generations in the percentage of people who disagree with the statement ‘long-term relationships are necessary to be happy’ is higher in Spain than in other South European countries. Altogether, South European countries display a significant degree of variation in attitudes towards marriage and practices related to the management of couple relationships, with Spaniards clearly standing out as an ‘outlier’ within the Mediterranean world. Portugal situates somewhere in between the Spanish case and the Italian and Greek cases. Likewise, Spain's young cohorts express least disapproval attitudes towards single motherhood across Europe (Table 5).

A second institutional dimension related to family life which has undergone dramatic changes is childrearing. Children are increasingly scarce in developed industrial societies, often in the same countries with high fertility rates some decades ago. The decline in fertility rates reflects constrains for families who intend to have children, such as uncertain job prospects or difficulties in combining work and family life. But beyond such considerations, having children is no longer seen as a duty or as a cultural imperative to be fulfilled in Southern Europe (Table 6). The percentage of older Italians (65 years and older) who agree with the statement ‘It is duty towards society to have children’ is 2.8 times higher than among young people (18 to 34 years old), 2.3 times higher in Spain, and 2.2 times in Greece. Similarly, the percentage of people agreeing with the statement ‘women need children in order to be fulfilled’ varies across age groups: it is 1.95 times higher among older Spaniards than among young ones and 1.8 times higher in Portugal. Young South European families have entered a new scenario, where having children has become more a decision to be taken by the partners involved, rather than being the result of compelling social norms and cultural expectations. Attitudes among Spaniards seem again to be changing at a faster pace than in other Mediterranean countries, bringing them in line with attitudes found in Central and Northern Europe.

A major change in the Mediterranean regimen relates to increasing women's participation in the formal labour market (except for Portugal, where female enrolment rates had traditionally been high). This is having important implications for both care and support that families are able to provide to their dependent members, and creates new pressures for balancing work and family responsibilities. The increase in female employment rates has been larger in Spain than in any other Mediterranean country. A close look at labour participation patterns across life-cycles in Table 7 reveals that female employment rates in Spain are similar to those found in Continental Europe and Britain and Ireland for those under 30 years (pre-maternal years for most of them). Such rates are somewhat lower for women on their thirties and early forties (in parallel with child rearing commitments), and they are notably lower in older ages.

Dual-earner families have proliferated in all Mediterranean countries. In countries where young residential emancipation has traditionally been postponed until ‘finding’ a suitable partner, the availability of two sources of income has become a requirement sine qua non for the couple to stand on their own two feet. Dual-earner families have proved to be the best strategy to purchase housing and a good deterrent against poverty in the early stages of the family cycle (Pavolini and Ranci 2008; Iglesias de Ussel et al. 2010).

Percentages for all four countries were close to OECD-21 average in 2008 (around 57%) with that of Portugal significantly higher (63%) (EU LFS 2008) A singular feature of many of these new families is that both partners work full time, posing thus severe difficulties for balancing work and care responsibilities in these families (Moreno 2006). Such difficulties are especially notorious for dual-earner couples with children. Approximately, 90% of children in dual-earner couples in Portugal and Greece live in households where both parents work full time. In Spain and Italy, this type of arrangements based in full-time work is significantly lower (around 60%), but still much higher than the proportions found in northern European countries, where part-time work is common in couples with children (especially among women).

Support for the dual earner model is well established in Mediterranean Europe. A large majority of Southern Europeans think that both partners should contribute to household income. More than 90% of the people across Southern Europe either ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with such a statement, a percentage that has not changed significantly since the early nineties. Favourable attitudes have always been strong in Portugal, where, as mentioned above, women employment rates have traditionally been high (Guerreiro et al. 2009). In other Mediterranean countries commitment to the dual earner model is stronger today than 20 years ago: the percentage of people that strongly agree with the statement used in the European Value Survey has increased substantially when comparing responses in the 2008 wave with those given in the 1990 survey. The increase has been particularly large in Spain (from 28.4% to 47.9%), where the levels reached in 2008 stand among the highest in Europe (only below Norway and France).

The ‘flip side’ of these orientations to work among South European is attitudes towards housewifery. About half of Mediterranean women find housewifery as fulfilling as having a paid job. The percentages in Southern Europe are not much different from those in other European countries (with the exception of Britain and Ireland or Finland, where the role is very well regarded). Women in younger cohorts attach low value to housewifery. The gap in attitudes between young and old women is around 30 point in Italy and Spain, and somewhat lower in Greece and Portugal.

Unlike their mothers, a large amount of women in the younger cohorts have attained high education credentials, which feed professional aspirations that are incompatible with taking on the lion's share of domestic and caring responsibilities. Even those who have low education levels have increased their priorities towards a professional career. These labour-oriented women are reluctant to accept ‘superwomen’ roles, in which they strive to manage ‘impossible situations’ (Nicole-Drancourt 1989), where they are the main providers of household services for the family while they simultaneously carry on with their professional activities. As a result, care practices have changed substantially.

Not long before, many young couples transferred caring responsibilities to grandparents and older relatives, reinforcing thus the cultural bases of the model of ‘family and kin solidarity’ in Southern Europe (Naldini 2003). But this strategy has its limits for a number of reasons. First, older mater familias available to take on caring roles are decreasing, as they are more prone to stay within the labour market and, thus, have less manoeuvrability to carry out demanding unpaid tasks for their daughters. Second, traditional arrangements display many sub-optimal features that leave family needs and expectations unfulfilled. The most obvious example is the growing gap between real and desired fertility. On average, women in their thirties in Spain, Italy or Greece have given birth to half the number of children that they ideally would like to have. Many will end up having fewer children than they would have wished (Marí-Klose and Marí-Klose 2006). Third, there is growing evidence showing that new ‘care deficits’ in South European households are being met by new strategies of commodification of care work, although still within the limits of the household. Thus, recent studies have gathered evidence indicating that care is moving from the traditional realm of unpaid family support to a grey area of poorly paid work performed mostly by female immigrant workers (Moreno-Fuentes and Bruquetas 2011).

The transition of Mediterranean societies to a new scenario where women have reduced their commitment to unpaid tasks in the household, poses challenges for the provision of services and care within the family. A first question that is frequently raised is to what extent men are devoting their time to activities in the domestic sphere, contributing in this manner to meet some of the needs left unfulfilled by the decline of housewives’ work. Table 8 reproduces data on the portion of time that women say their partners spend carrying out housework. Figures indicate the percentage of male partners who perform more than 25% of the total time devoted to such activities within the couple (drawn from the European Social Survey, Round 2). In other words, we estimate the proportion of male partners who cooperate significantly in domestic chores, although many of them may spend between 1/4 and half of the time (and therefore still do less than their female partners).

According to figures in Table 8, young Mediterranean males tend to be more ‘cooperative’ than their older counterparts. The highest proportion of cooperative male partners in Southern Europe is found in Spain. Close to one out of three young males in Spain cooperate with their female partners. Aggregate data across Europe seem to confirm findings of other studies conducted at the individual level. The behaviour of men appears to be affected by the extent to which women are economically independent and hold non-traditional gender expectations (Davis et al. 2004; Geist 2005). Countries where women have consolidated their ‘bargaining’ capacity, as a result of their higher educational levels and better economic resources, tend to score higher in gender equality within the family sphere.

Individual factors do not necessarily account fully for the variance found across countries.⁴ As broader normative environments, national contexts matter may contribute to shape the propensity of men to cooperate. Pressures for women to do and men to avoid housework are likely to be stronger when views supporting a strict division of housework are widespread, as it may be the cases of Greece, Italy and Portugal. In contrast, it may be expected that men will feel more compelled to devote more time and effort to housework in response to widely held attitudes legitimising such behaviours. Normative orientations are found in Spain to a much larger extent than in other Southern European countries, especially among younger cohorts. Similar strong support for male involvement reaches levels only found in France and some Nordic countries. Not surprisingly, the gap between younger and older generations in Spain is the largest.

A second question regarding housework is whether caring responsibilities have been transferred from young working mothers to grandparents – generally women, or ‘granny-mothers’– and other relatives. Evidence is far from conclusive, due to limited data available. According to data of the European Social Survey 2004 (Table 9), the hypothesis that South European parents and grandparents are providing services to their grown ups children and grandchildren (living in a different household) to a much larger extent than their counterparts in Central and North European countries is unwarranted.

Childcare responsibilities have increasingly been externalised to formal services, relieving grandparents and other relatives from the need to provide broad support. At this point in time, enrolment rates of children aged three to five years in pre-school are nearly universal. Enrolment rates for children under three years have increased dramatically in the last decade. According to OECD data, in Spain the proportion of children of 0–3 years in childcare centres (both public and private) has increased from 5% in 2000 to 37.5% in 2008 (OECD 2001; OECD Family database 2011). In Portugal, the progress is comparable: from 12% in 2000 to 47.4% in 2008. Greece clearly lags behind with just 15.7% of children in formal care under three years, and 46.6% for those of 3.5 years (see Table 10).

A growing number of Mediterranean women have lost the reluctance to enrol their children under six years of age in formal childcare. Social pressures requiring them to devote themselves full time to the care of young children has weakened, although differences across the Mediterranean area are noteworthy. Except Spaniards, a majority of South Europeans think that holding a job for mothers with children under three is detrimental for the latter (Table 11). Attitudes in Italy, Greece and Portugal provide a regime picture (Mediterranean) which is still different from all other welfare clusters (Anglo-Saxon, Continental and Nordic).

On examining attitudes towards care for the elderly, familistic orientations in Southern Europe remain vigorous, despite that needs for care and practices of delivery have dramatically changed. Elders live longer than ever before and, due to improvements in their financial and health status, most of them tend to maintain residential and personal autonomy until they reach very old ages. According to different survey and qualitative studies conducted in Southern Europe, the needs for care that emerge are covered informally inside the household by a family member, usually a women that does not receive any regular financial compensation for her work. Mediterranean families show a strong commitment to assist frail elders, whatever it takes. Around 90% of South Europeans agree with the statement ‘it's the duty of a child to care for an ill parent’. No significant differences are observed across generations. Such figures stand in sharp contrast with those found in Northern Europe. In general, in Catholic countries (including Belgium and France, and to a lesser extent, Germany, Austria and Ireland), attitudes favouring family involvement in caring activities for the elderly are widespread and intense.

It remains to be seen whether attitudes change as families increasingly externalise care to informal paid workers. The growing use of informal paid work in Southern Europe is a recent phenomenon, made possible by the massive influx of international female workers into countries that had traditionally had low levels of immigration. The new arrangements may not contradict previous orientations and expectations, since the informal work of immigrants is most often still monitored (and often directly paid) by family members. Care is generally considered as a female gendered area within the household, where the employer (usually a women) establishes a personal relationship with the employee and sets the terms under which caring tasks are performed (Lutz 2007). On the other hand, the development of new long term care policies does not necessarily contribute to the institutionalisation of a new professional sector that ‘defamilises’ care, as found in Northern Europe (Pavolini and Ranci 2008). A good example is provided by the new Spanish Dependency Law. Despite initial intentions to prioritise the creation of facilities for dependents that would take the place of families (at least partially), the largest part of benefits have become subsidies for family care giving within the household. These moneys often end up being transferred to non-professional external carers (immigrants, in many cases). As a result, attitudes and expectations about care responsibilities may not change as significantly as one would expect under conditions of externalisation of care.

It has been argued that the core institutional traits of a welfare regime are extremely unyielding to reform, no matter how pending or necessary such reform may be. This argument may have been overstated. In this paper, we have identified ‘collective impulses’ that may lead traditional welfare arrangements in directions that were not easy to envisage some years ago. These impulses are related to societal changes, particularly as regards lifestyles and needs of young generations now increasingly clashing with expectations, practices and arrangements characteristic of Mediterranean welfare. The dynamics of continuity and change differ across Southern EU countries. A certain degree of ambivalence remains concerning the ‘defamilisation’ of care arrangements, as shown in the widening gulf between two distinct sub-groupings: Italy-Greece and Spain-Portugal. With regard to the latter sub-group, Spain appears to stand out as an ‘outlier’ country which is leaving behind some of the features and rationales that have characterised the South European regime. The available evidence seems to validate the interpretation that a ‘Nordic path’ had already been taken by the Spanish welfare state (Moreno 2008). However, the impact of the economic crisis raises serious doubts on whether such a path can be followed.

Indeed, South European countries are undergoing financial difficulties that are adding new challenges to the re-structuring of welfare arrangements. With high rates of unemployment, young people are facing the brunt of the downturn. The decline of formal familism has weakened the model of family and kin solidarity that has traditionally provided well-being for the most vulnerable members of the household, and very especially for the young. Changes in young female lives have also fostered new individual aspirations that clash with expectations of care widely held by older generations. In a context of serious budget constraints, it is unlikely that governments will have the capacity to expand social protection and to comply with the needs of younger generations in the foreseeable future. If worst comes to worst, young people may be additionally harmed by cuts in a welfare domain already unfriendly to them in areas such as housing, education, family and active labour market policies. Signs of discontent with current arrangements have already been voiced loudly in the streets and major squares of many South European cities.

All things considered, the ingrained conviction of inertia attributed to Mediterranean familism may be challenged. The long-standing claim that the family remains the Alpha and Omega institution shaping all prospective scenarios for Southern European welfare is being shacked by unforeseen ‘collective impulses’ of a new generation: Eppur si muove?

Luis Moreno, Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (IPP-CSIC) in Madrid. As a political sociologist, two are his long-standing fields of research: (a) Social policy and welfare state; and (b) Territorial politics (decentralisation, federalism, nationalism and Europeanisation). Both have been carried out from a comparative perspective. His books include: The Territorial Politics of Welfare (& N. McEwen, co-eds., 2005), Diversity and Unity in Federal Systems (& C. Colino, co-eds., 2010), and La Europa asocial (2012). E-mail: [email protected]

Pau Marí-Klose, Assitant Professor at the University of Zaragoza. His research interests lie in areas of childhood poverty, family relations, and social policies. He is currently the principal investigator of an R + D + I project financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness that studies the interface between transformations in families and social policies in Spain. He has published nine books and several articles. His books include: Childhood and the Future (2010) and Edad del Cambio (2006). E-mail: [email protected]