Presentation in ESA conference 2017 RN 12

1. Sustainable wellbeing in the Nordic
welfare state?
RN 12 (Un-)Sustainable Consumption
D.Soc.Sc. Senior Researcher Paula Saikkonen, Social Policy Research Unit
ESA conference 2017

2. 2
The starting point
• The functionalities of societies and dynamic nature
– Risk, uncertainty, unknown unknowns (e.g. Beck U, Renn O.
2008)
• Can society produce wellbeing or welfare
– without endangering environment? (Dodds 1997; Koch & al 2017;
Koch & Fritz 2014)
• Recognizing and acknowledging the environmental problems
– The problem definition matters
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3. The welfare system and wellbeing
• The role of social security, protection and services (welfare
system) in Nordic countries
– from residual forms to universalism (social insurance “for all”)
– the rate of employment high
– constant economic growth
• Wellbeing (according to Erik Allardt)
– Having (living standards, health)
– Loving (meaningful social relationship)
– Being (the possibility to be herself or himself)
– The objective and subjective wellbeing
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4. The research setting – focusing on least well-
off
• Does the welfare system produce wellbeing to people on
income support? (means-tested, last-resort financial aid in
Finland) Could the system be more sustainable?
• Research material: group interviews
– Six group interviews about services and income support around
Finland
– 29 Interviewees had been a long time (several years) on social
assistance ( the so-called vulnerable groups)
– 10 females, 19 males, 29-68-year-old
• Qualitative content analyses (theory based)
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5. Analyses: only material wellbeing seem to
matter in the welfare system
• Having category was a dominant one.
– Income support sets the standards for need covered; it is a
baseline.
– Probably too much emphasized category in the welfare system
• Not so much possibilities in being category;
– However, some interviewees helped others in the similar
positions
• To sum up: the welfare system seemed to be more interest to
deliver financial aid and controlling it than the actual wellbeing
of the recipients of income support. This can be a problem for
the ecologically and socially sustainable wellbeing; the
individual well-being is strongly related to a position of the
labour market in the capitalist system, thus economic growth
and consumption.
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6. Results
• For the recipients of income support all the categories of
wellbeing were important (of course!), however, the welfare
system supported mostly the having category
– Thus it missed other opportunities and the aspects of wellbeing
that are especially important for recipients with the cumulated
problems.
– The emphasize is more or less in activation
– “The same size fits all”, except it doesn’t
• Indeed, the lack of resources influence on social relations
– But it shouldn’t as much as it does (see Matthies & Närhi 2017)
• Consumer citizenship instead of social citizenship?
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7. Conclusion
• Spatial and temporal aspects – the distribution of advantages
and disadvantages when aiming at better outcomes
– Social and ecological sustainability are intertwined though the
period of time often is different.
– Knowledge production processes and decision-making (See
Norton 2017)
• Wellbeing as a relational research object (cf. Max-Neef and
theory of needs)
– More responsibilities for localities? Yet, national guidelines are
necessary too.
• Universalism in the individualized world?
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8. Thank you!
8
paula.saikkonen@thl.fi

9. References
Beck, U. (1996) Risk society and provident state. In S. Lash, B. Szerszynski &
B. Wynne (ed.) Risk, environment & modernity.
Dodds. Steve (1997) Towards a ’science of sustainability’: Improving the way
ecological economics understands human well-being. Ecologcal Economics 23
(2), 95-111.
Koch, M., Buch-Hansen, H., Fritz, M. (2017) Sgifting Priorities in Degrowth
Research: An Argument for the Centrality of Human Needs. Ecological
Economic 138, 74-81.
Koch, M. & Fritz M (2014) Building the Eco-social State: Do Welfare Regimes
Matter? Journal of Social Policy 43 (4), 679-703.
Matthies, Aila-Leena & Närhi, Kati (2017) The Ecosocial Transition of Societies
: The Contribution of Social Work and Social Policy. New York: Routledge.
Norton, Bryan G. (2017) A Situational Understandig of Environmental Values
and Evaluation. Ecological Economics 138,
Renn, O. (2008) Risk Governance. Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex
World. London: Earthscan.
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