Over the past few decades, all affluent democracies have been coping with two major new trends: population aging, and new social risks resulting from de-industrialization. How have these trends, and their timing, affected welfare spending within and between countries? We investigate up to 21...

The large increase in economic inequality and the dismantling of the welfare state in Western democracies has been connected to the rise of populist parties. If populist voting is explained by fear and labor market insecurity and if people care more about procedural fairness than inequality of...

The welfare state has long been under debate. Besides various theoretical discussions, it has often been empirically investigated regarding its effects on inequality and economic growth. With the advent of the scientific field of happiness research, scholars began to discuss the welfare state's...