Social Security and Fiscal Design: A New Proposal for Welfare State Classification

The most recent conjunctures of financial criticality have brought about evident institutional and socio-economic transformation trajectories; looking at the Western context, the policy field of welfare assistance and protection has seemingly been affected by these changes. Since the main theoretical foundations for the comparative study of these regimes of public aid towards socio-economic disadvantage primarily derive from scientific contributions that are previous to this alteration window, we suggest the opportunity of drafting a new epistemic framework, which, on one hand, may be able to renovate the analytical and heuristic appropriateness of the so called ‘regime approach’, while, on the other, providing a precise and in-depth glance at the current geography of welfare architectures within the developed economies’ perimeter, mainly relying on quantitative indicators inherent (i) to the private sector’s participation in welfare provision, (ii) to the public actor’s generosity of treatment and (iii) to the familist architectural propensity. The 28-case-studies field-testing of the framework, conducted via modern HCA, KCA and PCA techniques provides results that corroborate the practical reliability of the fiscal design model as a means of welfare legacy family identification.