Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Denmark
Slovakia
Poland
Spain
Netherlands
Sweden
Finland
Belgium
France
Greece
Italy
Finland
France
Belgium
Germany
Ireland
Spain
Czech rep
Slovenia
Portugal
Germany
Sweden
Portugal
Hungary
Great Britain
Austria
Luxembourg
Italy
Ireland
Denmark
Poland
Netherlands
Austria
Slovenia
Hungary
Luxembourg
Slovakia
Czech rep
Greece
Great Britain
0
1
2
3
4
0
1
2
3
4
Mobility Rate 2000s
Mobility Rate 2000s
FIGURE 4.6. Labor Markets and Mobility in the European Union (
Source:
Author's
elaboration. See Appendix for variable definitions and data sources.)
fiscal policy in the EU.
Figure 4.5
shows how poor countries such as Slovenia
or the Czech Republic are also fairly egalitarian. A majority of citizens in these
countries may fear that changes imposed to their social security system by a
centralized decision maker will be the source of increasing inequalities, despite
the potential transfer of significant resources from other areas of the Union. In
sum, the distributive tensions associated with the geography of income inequal-
ity in the European Union define a constellation of preferences in which, for
very diverse reasons, not even the poorest citizens within the poorer states have
incentives to mobilize politically in support of a more centralized redistributive
policy.
The constraints upon a centralized system of interpersonal redistribution
would only grow stronger should an uneven geography of risk overlap with an
uneven geography of income inequality. Social policy systems combine, often
indistinctly, redistributive and insurance components in their design. Some
aspects of the latter, most centrally unemployment and old-age insurance, tie
directly with the workings of labor markets (Iversen,
2005
; Snower and De
la Dehesa
1997
). Thus, as elaborated in detail in
Chapter 2
, regional differ-
ences in the incidence of labor market risks and the organization of labor
markets also shape preferences about the institutional organization of systems
of interpersonal redistribution.
Figure 4.6
displays the extent to which Euro-
pean countries vary in the organization of their labor markets by combining
three relevant indicators: the unemployment rate, as a measure of realized labor
market risk; the mobility rate, that is, the percentage of the domestic popula-
tion that relocated relative to the country's total population, as a proxy for the
scope of cross-regional population externalities; and the expenditure share in
active labor market policies, as a proxy for the government's intervention in
the organization of “local” labor markets.
