Is Property an Insurance or an Additional Burden? Financial Stress Among Homeowners in Europe

A crucial function of wealth is to protect individuals from the consequences of adverse life events. However, sometimes wealth also implies additional financial risks. In addition to the insurance function of homeownership (the most common form of wealth), we therefore also examine financial squeezes that reflect the indebtedness and social embeddedness of homeowners and limit their options for dealing with social risks. A third hypothesis expects a trade‐off between social protection and homeownership. Taking the example of unemployment, we examine the effects of short‐term unemployment on the perceived financial situation of households based on data derived from EU‐SILC for 27 European countries. It can be shown that debt‐free homeownership reduces financial stress in the case of unemployment compared to tenants and indebted owners. A debt‐free home thus offers an additional buffer and insurance against the financial consequences of unemployment. However, indebted homeowners are particularly hard hit by unemployment because they have to use all their financial resources to pay off their mortgages. Finally, we did not find a trade‐off but a cumulation of advantages due to homeownership and generous unemployment benefits in countries with high net replacement rates

Mapping Young NEETs Across Europe: Exploring the Institutional Configurations Promoting Youth Disengagement from Education and Employment

Over the past decade, the number of young people neither in employment, education, or training (NEET) has reached a seriously high level in many European countries. Previous studies have illustrated the heterogeneity of this group and that they differ considerably across Europe. However, the reasons of these cross-country differences have hardly been investigated so far. This study explores how the rates of different NEET subgroups are conditioned by various institutional configurations by applying fuzzy-set Quantitative Comparative Analysis for 26 European countries using aggregated EU Labour Force Survey data from 2018. The analysis reveals that institutional causes of being NEET are as diverse as the group itself. Thus, high levels of young NEETs with care responsibilities are found in countries with a lack of family-related services in conjunction with weak formalised long-term care as it is true in mostly Central Eastern European countries. In contrast, high rates of NEETs with a disability are prevalent mainly in Northern European countries where generous and inefficient disability benefit schemes exist that create false incentives to stay away from the labour market. Finally, high proportions of unemployed and discouraged young NEETs are found in those countries hit hardest by the crisis and with high labour market rigidities, low vocational specificity, and a lack of active labour market policies like in the Southern and some Central Eastern European countries. The results illustrate that young people face very different barriers across Europe and that country-specific measures must be taken to reduce the number of NEETs in Europe

Polarization and marginalization during the Eurozone crisis: The persistence of Eurosclerosis

The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis taking place since 2008 are real-life tests for policies aimed at promoting inclusive labor markets in the Eurozone. Therefore, this article discusses first how the risk of being a labor market outsider evolved in the Eurozone during the crises, and whether this risk diverged between social groups. Using EU-SILC data, we describe the overall level of outsider risks before and during the crises - risks of being either unemployed, temporarily employed or earning a low wage - among the labor force ('polarization') and the concentration of these risks among vulnerable groups ('marginalization'). Our results show that the outsider risks have particularly increased in the Southern European countries, and for young workers throughout the EU, and in the case of unemployment, also for low-skilled workers. In the second step, we study how employment protection legislation, union density and wage bargaining systems influence polarization and marginalization in the context of an economic crisis. In contrast to discussions about the end of Eurosclerosis, we find that strict employment protection and centralized bargaining in-crease the marginalization of vulnerable groups while strong unions can reduce polarization