Cash- benefits: benefits paid out such as unemployment benefit, sickness and maternity benefit or pensions.
Child benefits: benefits given to families with children. They can be means tested, dependent on the number of children and age of children.
Citizenship: Individual’s legal position within a country. Citizenship is connected to social, political and civil rights.
Coefficient of variation: Is the ratio of the standard deviation divided with the average of a distribution. The lower the value is the more alike are the distribution.
Decommodification: the extent to which an individual’s welfare is reliant upon the market
Deserving: Are those people who without no fault of themselves deserves a welfare benefit. It is thus also implicitly a normative loaded concept given that there can be a different understanding of who is in need without no fault of themselves.
Disability: Denotes that a person either by birth or later in life has restrictions for either physical or psychological issues to participate on equal basis with other persons
Ethnicity: The shared ethnic background of a group of people and a process of self-identity and forms of social stratification. Ethnicity is also a multifaceted concept.
European Social Survey: A European Survey done in the same way in most European countries making it possible to get information on many value questions. It is argued to analyse and describe: interaction between Europe's changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations (http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/).
Evaluation, Evidence: refers to analysis showing the impact of different types of intervention. Often it is used in order to achieve the most efficient interaction. Evidence can be achieved at different levels.
Family policy: Refers to various types of policies supporting family life – ranging from benefits in cash to social services
Family: the notion of a group of people often related to each other by biological bonds, but can be interpreted broader as a group of relatives
Fiscal welfare: denotes welfare distributed through the tax-system, by, for example, a reduction in the tax to be paid if saving for pension purposes or having a job
Flexicurity: refers to the notion of a combination of flexibility and security at the labour market. There are many different forms and kinds of flexicurity.
Gender: Refers to the sex of person. In welfare analysis it refers to the often different positions of men and women in societies, and, how the impact of state, market and civil society impacts on their position in society, including the labour market. Earlier many welfare states had the male-breadwinner model emphasizing that the man was earning the money while women were taking care of the children.
Gini-coefficient: measures the degree of inequality in a distribution, and describes how close or far a country is from full equality or full inequality. It ranges from 0 (full equality) to 1 (full inequality)
Governance: relates to the use of institutions, structures of authority in order to allocate and coordinate or control activity in a society, and in relation to welfare states how especially steering of welfare either in form of in-kind or in-cash benefits takes place.
Health care: refers to support to help the individual have or continue to have a good health. It can be provided and/or financed publicly as well as privately.
In-kind benefits: benefits delivered such as housing, food, welfare services or support for people with disabilities. They can be provided directly or through a voucher enabling the user to get the service they are eligible for
Labour market: refers to the broad connotation of the place where demand and supply of different kinds of labour meets. In case of that there is no balance unemployment occurs
Legitimacy: term to show the degree of support for welfare state activities, either the welfare state in itself or different parts of the welfare state. There can thus be different kind of support to welfare state activities, especially dependent on the viewpoint of whether those receiving benefits are deserving or undeserving.
Long-term care: relates to care taken place over a long time, and, is in welfare states therefore mostly related to care for frail elderly
Market failure: A term to describe that the market is not functioning as it will do in case of perfect competition
Marketization: Is referring to the process with which welfare states have used market or market type mechanism in the delivery of welfare services.
Means-tested benefits: A benefit where the level and right to receive the benefit is dependent on the person/family’s income and/or wealth.
Occupational welfare: is welfare delivered through being on the labour market, it can be paid by the employer either directly or indirectly, but it might also be supported by economic incentives from the state through the tax system.
Old age care: care especially focused on and with the purpose of help elderly people
OMC: Open Method of Co-ordination referring to a soft-law approach in the European Union with the expectation that agreement of a set of given goals the individual countries will have and will use different options to reach these goals.
Path-dependency: The argument that welfare states continues on the path they have developed over history.
Pension: A sum of money an individual can receive when fulfilling a certain number of criteria (the most central being age) in a welfare state given an expectation that the individual no longer is able to be working on the labour market
Poverty: living in poverty describes a person having below a set limit, which can be absolute (such as 2 dollars per day) or relative (such as 60 % of median income in a country).
Prevention: denote attempts to reduce the risk of that a person will need help or support from the welfare state
Public goods: This is goods where one person’s use of the good does not hinder another person in using the good, e.g. air. They are often used collectively such as military, justice, firebrigade, but also individually such as nature, parks, roads etc. There are borderline cases.
Public welfare: Refers to the welfare delivered and/or financed directly by the public sector
Sickness benefit: The benefit an individual can receive in case of sickness. This can be by the welfare state, but in principle also by a private insurance or collective agreement (such as full wage income during sickness for a certain time)
Social exclusion: Refers to when a person or a groups of persons are not integrated into one or more elements of societal life. This can be the labour market, but also social contacts with other people.
Social security: Is the benefits decided to compensate individual for the occurrence of a special social contingency such as sickness, unemployment etc.
Social stratification: the way a society is stratified along different lines. Having a position have an impact on the individual’s ability to act.
Take-up rate: Describes the percentages of a given population having a right to receive a benefit and/or services and actually receives it.
Taxation: Is the payment by individual’s to the state where there is no right to receive anything back, compared to insurance premiums where when a specific contingency occurs there is a right to compensation.
Unemployment insurance: is the coverage with benefit in case of that a person becomes unemployed
Unemployment: Is the number of people without a job who is prepared and willing to work in case a vacant job is available.
Universalism: a principle of access to goods and services dependent on being citizen or having the right to stay in a country and then after fulfilling certain requirements eligible for benefits.
Welfare mix: refers to the way state, market and civil society participate in financing and/or delivery of welfare benefits and services
Welfare state: a society trying to ensure its citizens a guaranteed minimum living standard. There is no uniform agreement of what precisely constitute a welfare state
Welfare: an encapsulation of elements important for a person’s life, in some countries it can imply income-tested benefits.
- Zygote
- A ‘proto-embryo’ of the firsttwo weeks after conception – a small collection of identical cells.