Abstract
Welfare state research is a crucial part of social policy, and welfare states have traditionally been classified through the lens of qualitative typologies such as Esping-Andersen's. These typologies do provide the first level of analysis and comparison; however, this approach has several flaws: they are geographically limited, countries are subject to change and move from one category to another over time, any given country might fit into several typologies, and the very basis of these methods has been questioned.
In this article, we set out to develop another layer of analysis, using a quantitative indicator to help better assess the characteristics of welfare states. This indicator would need to be both universal and consider the general prerogatives of any welfare state.
For this reason, we needed to consider both the economic and social dimensions of social policy, which led us to settle on a scattergram with an X and Y-axis. Our indicator used for X is a modified debt-sustainability formula.
While our Y-axis consists of a weighted social outcome indicator, including inequalities, income, life expectancy, labour force participation, education, and the environmental impact.