Institute of Political Science

Research

Welfare State Policy

SNF-Project: The Elasticity of Family Models Revisited: Policy configurations and the gender-specific reconciliation of work and care (2019-2023)

A vast breadth of empirical literature exists that investigates the determinants and patterns of female labour market integration. One of the crucial findings is that policy structures and, in particular, external childcare are among the most important factors facilitating and influencing female employment. While the extant literature has largely focused on employment, we aim at investigating female (and male) work patterns from a broader perspective. In particular, we investigate the role of varying policy contexts on the within-household division of labour, namely on the allocation of time of partners to paid work, care work and housework, in five European countries.

Welfare State Policy and Policy Feedback

This area of research focuses on the question of how and why different countries or subnational units vary in their supply of welfare state policies and – most importantly – what consequences these different policies have on societal, economic, and political outcomes. The crucial assumption on which the different research projects are built, suggests that the policy environment influences citizens’ value and behavior patterns. Policies, however, typically do not affect the entire population in a uniform way; rather, different groups of citizens may react to and be influenced by a given policy context quite differently.
While this idea influences many empirical studies executed by Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen and her team, recently she has been contributing to the field of policy feedback research on a more conceptual basis.