Social Stratification of EU Countries: a multidimensional analysis

European countries are characterised by heterogeneous social contexts related both to structural socio-cultural framework and to social policies models. In general, Northern European countries present a lower social stratification resulting from lower income inequality, smaller gender gap and greater equal opportunities for health and other social outcomes. This is due to generous, inclusive and universal income and services policies, to a well-performing labour market and to a more equitable role of women within the family. A greater social stratification is typical of continental and Mediterranean European countries, where, especially in Southern Europe, many social benefits are related to the working status and are asymmetrically distributed among workers. However, social stratification is a multidimensional issue that amplifies the inequalities of resources and opportunities among individuals, facilitates an unfair exposure to social risks, and contributes to the verticalization of power relations. To counter this deterministic trend, EU national governments and the EU itself are called to restore more horizontal relations among individuals, by removing through the implementation of effective social protection systems, the socioeconomic obstacles to people’s full participation in the political, economic, and social life. Designing and implementing efficient and effective social protection systems is a challenging task, and policy makers must base their decisions on the availability of updated and exhaustive analyses. Specifically, social protection systems are complex structures, thus the measurement of their performance requires the use of composite indices. Recent research carried out on social protection systems in the EU (Antonelli and De Bonis, 2019) has designed a synthetic indicator - the Social Protection Performance Index (SPPI) - to measure the effectiveness of social protection systems. The SPPI is based on a set of elementary indicators associated with seven dimensions of welfare spending. The SPPI has been modified by Antonelli and Salustri (2019) to interpret results along four dimensions, and several scoring rules have been proposed to test the robustness of the scores initially computed. Lying on these premises, the scope of this research is to improve and expand the dataset used in previous analyses and compute the scores of the SPPI in a longitudinal framework. Specifically, the new longitudinal dataset is built using OECD and EUROSTAT data to monitor the performances of 22 European protection systems in the decade after the outbreak of the Great Recession in 2007. The monitoring exercise involves four dimensions (wellbeing, inclusion, poverty, and social security). The SPPI is computed by measuring both levels and ranks associated to the 11 elementary indexes considered in the analysis. Data are normalized using the Minmax criteria applied to the whole panel, and, when, appropriate, a truncated scoring function is used to facilitate the interpretation of the scores obtained. Results allow to monitor the longitudinal evolution of the SSPI across 22 countries and 11 years, highlighting the structural heterogeneity that characterizes the EU countries, and how the European social protection systems reacted to the effects of the Great Recession. Furthermore, the scores computed for the SPPI are regressed over a set of structural variables (population, territory, public deficit and debt, GDP…) to test whether the performances of the European protection systems depend on territorial and economic factors rather than on political and social choices. The interpretation of the results achieved leads to the conclusion that the heterogeneity in the performances of the European social protection systems has both a horizontal and a vertical dimension, that is, lower performances may be also associated to lower capacity of representing national interests at European level. If not corrected through effective policies at European level, the dual nature of the observed social imbalances may lead to reinforcing social stratification rather than levelling the playing field, and that, in turn, may contribute to consolidate the verticalization of power relations among European countries, rather than fostering some degree of convergence. The analysis of the evidence built allows to evaluate whether the EU reaction to the outbreak of the Great Recession has led to a convergence or a divergence in the performances of the European social protection systems.