Transcript Commission Consultation

Europe’s Social Reality
Roger Liddle, Principle Policy Advisor to the President of European
Commission
Globalisation and the Future of the Welfare State
Santiago, Chile
15 March 2007
1
Is Globalisation the biggest factor driving
social change in our societies?
YES:
• Some loss of jobs in low skilled sectors subject to new international
competition
• Some “delocalization” – but not as much as people think and often, when it
happens, within the EU itself to the new Member States
• Outsourcing of particular skills
• Increased migratory pressures (relative ease of travel, refugees, poor people
seeking better life, human trafficking)
• Intense pressure on energy and natural resources, with need to tackle
climate change
2
BUT
Social change mainly home grown in Europe
• Technical progress and rising living standards driving Europe’s economic
transformation to a knowledge and service economy
• Rise of the Welfare State creating new opportunities and leading to some
new dependencies
• Gender and demographic change
• The coming of mass affluence and the individualization of values
3
From the industrial to the knowledge
and service economy
1947 Large parts of Europe still pre-industrial
1977 Mass manufacturing industrial economy
2007 40% work in “knowledge sectors” in EU15
2/3 of all jobs in services (EU25)
4
Shifts in occupational structure very fast
Between 2000 and 2004,
1.7m fewer industrial jobs;
1.1m fewer agricultural jobs;
8m more service jobs
Job growth in last decade (EU15):
overall only 6%,
in knowledge sectors 24%
5
Big social implication of knowledge economy:
the necessity of skills
• 50% of jobs already demand a high level of cognitive and/or
personal skills.
• Number is growing fast: two thirds of new jobs in the new
economy are skilled.
• Increasingly bleak prospects for unskilled: unemployment rate
three times higher than for graduates
6
YET
• 1 in 3 of the EU workforce is unskilled
• 1 in 6 still leaving school without skills
• Educational performance (in terms of attainment of
intermediate skills) in decline in some MS
• Bleak prospects for low skilled, especially men, who lose
their jobs in mid-life
7
Unemployment still top political issue in most
Member States despite recent recovery
(employment rate up 5% since 2000)
• Youth unemployment twice the unemployment
rate overall: over 20% in France, Italy and
Spain; around 40% in Poland
• Very low employment rates for over 55s
despite recent improvements
8
Confidence in keeping one’s job
9
New patterns of regional inequality:
•
Cities prospering that attract “creative class” but old industrial towns in decline
•
Within EU 15, gap between richest and poorest MS narrowed, but gap between
richest and poorest regions across EU 15 widened
•
In NMS, two thirds live in regions where GDP per head is less than half EU
average: average income of bottom quarter of the population in Bulgaria and
Romania as little as 100 Euro a month
•
Generational distribution of income
10
The new world of work
Reasonable levels of job satisfaction (84% very satisfied or fairly satisfied)
But
• 28% feel their health at risk because of work
• Complaints of rising work intensity – stress and muscular pain
• Growth in non-standard jobs (1 in 7 overall) concentrated in MS with
strong “insider/outsider divisions” in their labour markets (eg France,
Germany, Poland and Spain)
• Falling trade union membership except in Nordics (in the last decade trade
union membership fell by 10% in Italy and the Netherlands; a quarter in
Britain and Germany; and by half in the NMS)
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Level of stress at work
More stress in Eastern
countries?
12
Impact of welfare state
Contribution of health services, pensions and the abolition of aboslute poverty on
prospects for a long life
Rise in life expectancy is a dramatic European achievement
Men
Women
1900
43.5
46.0
2000
75.4
81.4
2050
82.3
87.4
But rise in dependency: among 55-64 year olds over 40% of men and 60% of
women have dropped out of the labour market
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Quality of welfare systems
“For each of the following please tell me whether you think it applies to the
(NATIONALITY) social welfare system? Our social welfare system… ”
Answers “It applies to…” – EU 25
Is too expensive for the
(NATIONALITY) society
53%
Provides wide enough
coverage
Could serve as a model
for other countries
51%
42%
Expensive but worth14
it
But
Rise in dependency:
•
among 55-64 year olds over 40% of men and 60% of women have dropped
out of the labour market
And
Persistence of relative poverty
•
1 in 6 over 65s – 12 million of 72 million pensioners – clasified as at risk of
poverty.
•
1 in 5 children (under 18 year olds) – 18 million of the EU’s 94 million
children at risk of poverty
15
Populations at risk of falling into poverty
Anyone is at risk
someday.
16
Child poverty big issue across Europe - concentrated among
• Single parent families: 4.4% of all EU households (but at high
of 8.4% in UK) – a third at risk of poverty
• Jobless households where 10% of European children live –
60% at risk of poverty
• Large families on low incomes
and rising in several MS!
17
Gender and demographic change
More women in work
• Gap between proportion of men and women with
jobs fallen to 15% (uniform fall across EU)
• Prevalence of part time work varies a great deal
(Portugal 10%, Finland11%, Netherlands 53%)
18
Declining fertility
• 1960 2.69; 1980 1.82; 2000 1.53; 2003 1.48: well below sustainable levels
• Biggest recent falls in southern Europe and new Member States
• Some evidence that women with jobs now more likely to have children
• Some evidence that fertility rates higher in MS with better childcare, easier
maternity and paternity leave and greater availability of part time work
Supporting the “dual earner” couple now the prime task of family policy
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Implications of ageing
Sustainability of the Social Model as the public spending costs of age related
expenditure rises by 2.5% of GDP by 2030 and 4.3% by 2050
28% of over 70s currently live alone; 40% of over 80 year olds
Between a third and two thirds of over 75 year olds dependent on some form
of informal care
Pressure on weakening extended families (mainly women, without greater gender
sharing of tasks) to care for elderly at same time as to stay at work longer in order
to make pensions more sustainable
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MIGRATION AND DIVERSITY
Migration
• no solution to demographic problem in long term (as
birth rate of migrant communities falls to general
European level)
• but can be source of new labour supply and economic
growth in the medium term
• however social impact profound
21
Recent waves of migration transforming European cities
Cities as different as Birmingham, Malmo and Marseilles now
made up of more than one third ethnic minorities
"Non-native Dutch population" forecast to be 14.1% of total
population by 2020 – but over half population of Amsterdam
and Rotterdam (up from 6% in 1973)
This diversity enriches Europe: migrant contribution to diet,
sport, social welfare and public services
But big problems of social integration remain
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Problems for migrants:
• Discrimination, especially in labour market (in
the Netherlands, two thirds of the adult
population have jobs, but only 40% of
Moroccans)
• Half world of "paperless illegals“
• Poor educational attainment (60% of Dutch
Moroccans leave school without qualifications
as against only 10% of "native Dutch")
23
Problems of integration:
•
60% of Europeans believe there are limits to how many people of other races,
religions or cultures a society can accept: 25% reject multiculturalism altogether
•
Half the "native Dutch" don't want neighbours next door of different ethnic origin
•
Polling shows that a huge majority of Britons blame asylum seekers and migrants
for abusing the welfare system
•
Good economic performance and a well developed Social Model, as in Denmark, is
no guarantee of successful integration
•
Debate and dialogue urgently needed to establish common obligations of
citizenship, particularly the boundaries between private beliefs and public rights
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The question of immigration
“For each of the following statements, please tell me whether you tend to agree or
tend to disagree.”
Answers “Tend to agree” – EU 25
People from other ethnic groups are enriching the
cultural life of (OUR COUNTRY)
54%
We need immigrants to work in certain sectors of
our economy
48%
The presence of people from other ethnic groups
increases unemployment in (OUR COUNTRY)
46%
The presence of people from other ethnic groups is
a cause of insecurity
The arrival of immigrants in Europe can efficiently
solve the problem of Europe’s ageing population
42%
32%
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Balanced views on immigration
RISE OF THE CITIZEN CONSUMER
Emergence of new wants
• material needs increasingly satisfied (centrally heated modern homes
equipped with digital entertainment and wide range of consumer
appliances, including dishwashers)
• new consumer demands for leisure, fitness, tourism, style (see the growth
of new occupations like interior designers, personal counselors and gym
instructors) driving Europe's transformation to a knowledge and service
economy
• information empowerment: demand for more personalized and consumer
accountable public as well as private services; growth of self-health
• increasing consciousness of risk (concerns for food safety, child safety etc)
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BUT
• Rise of consumer debt
• Pervasive commercialization of life, including
childhood
• Casualties of those who can't keep up on the "hedonic
treadmill" of consumption – increases in obesity,
alcoholism and mental illness
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VALUE SHIFTS
Trend across Europe to individualization
• Different from increasing secularization/ decline of
religious belief and decline in "social capital/ civic
engagement/ trust in politics – but associated.
• Individuals seeing their lives as a personal biography
to be written – not determined by their class, religion,
origin
The result – greater personal freedom and tolerance of
diverse sexuality and lifestyles
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BUT
• Rising divorce rates
• More births outside marriage (over a quarter across
the EU)
• More people living on their own in the prime of life
• Decline of extended family and the role of
grandparents (only a quarter of grandparents care for
grandchildren quite frequently – half never)
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Things that are important to people
Health
85%
Your family
85%
38%
44%
Leisure time
Helping others or voluntary
work
54%
21%
31%
11%
Politics
0%
Very important
10%
9%
33%
25%
Religion
27%
32%
20%
Quite important
5%
46%
51%
Work
40%
50%
Not very important
60%
1%
7%
7% 2%
15%
4%2%
20%
35%
30%
2%1%
12%
57%
Friends and acquaintances
1%
14%
1%
22%
70%
80%
Not at all important
90%
100%
DK
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GROWING CONCERN FOR « QUALITY OF LIFE »
Quality of life in immediate post 1945 era defined by
access to decent housing, adequate public services,
and consumer goods like washing machines and cars
Rise in environmental concerns from 1970s
Key role played by EU in tackling air pollution,
improving the purity of drinking water, cleaning up
rivers and beaches, reducing industrial and vehicle
emissions, tackling effectively the 1980s issues of the
"hole in the ozone layer" and "acid rain"
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Critical challenges remain
• Work life balance
• Erosion of "positional goods": concretization of the European
coastline grew 7.5% in last decade; air travel growing 5% a
year
• Rapid spread of urbanization – much faster then population
growth – 40% increase in urban traffic forecast from 1995 to
2030
• Climate change – catastrophe?
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Anticipated life for future generations
Contrasted anticipated
futures for generations
to come
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GROWING RISKS OF SOCIAL POLARISATION
• New patterns of regional and occupational inequality
as a result of growing divisions between the
perceived "winners" and "losers" from globalization
• Because education is much more important in the
knowledge economy, deteriorating position of low
skilled – rising pre-tax wage inequality
• Embedding of disadvantage from one generation to
the next becoming more, not less of an issue – better
educated parents find it easier to embed advantage for
their children (for example, in securing access to
university)
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Lesson from the Eurobarometer

Overall, European Union citizens are happy with their personal
life but more critical about collective life.

There is a clear tendency of EU citizens to distrust public
institutions.

EU citizens are nonetheless relatively satisfied with their
everyday life environment although there are some major
differences across member states.

A quarter of European Union citizens feel at risk of falling into
poverty and 62% believe that anyone is at risk of poverty
sometime in their life.

64% of European Union citizens are of the view that the life of
those who are children today will be more difficult than the life of
their own generation.

The survey shows that in all the 27 countries, getting a good
education is seen as one of the two most important things for
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getting ahead in life.
TO SUM UP
Europeans should be optimistic about the EU's ability to prosper in a
Global Age
Key Challenges :
• Education and skills in the knowledge economy : in some Member
States educational performance in decline.
• Generational inequity due to demographic change.
• Europe needs more migrants : but considerable problems of social
integration in many Member States.
• Risks of social polarization : increasing poverty and inequality;
declining social mobility.
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