Compare And Contrast European Welfare States

As mentioned before, a welfare state aims to aid those who are unable to establish a good live for themselves or their children. Although there are many European countries that provide welfare programs to their citizens, most welfare systems in these countries have several significant similarities. For example, welfare states in Europe attempt to commit to full employment, social protections for all citizens, social inclusion, and democracy. Because social welfare states in Europe attempt to reach specific goals, they have programs in place such as free health care and education that the United States does not. These programs in European welfare states often do meet the goals they were meant to reach and cause a significant amount of positive impacts in these
After taking account of taxes and transfers, the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) measured the Gini coefficients of the majority of European countries, and discovered that Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands are the countries that have the lowest poverty rate. Another goal of the welfare states of Europe is to provide protection against labor market risks. This implies that the welfare systems will attempt to create programs that protect workers from losing their jobs. For example, since welfare states want to reduce the number of people that are unemployed, they make it harder for employers to fire employees by increasing firing costs and severance payments for employees. In addition to this, in order to provide protection against labor market risks, welfare states promote and fund unemployment benefits for their citizens. This leads to positive effects for the countries because there is less unemployment because more people are able to keep their jobs, and even those who do not have jobs are able to live sufficient