The name is absent

Aliki Mouriki

Despite some major changes in the welfare regimes over the past 20 years and successive institu-
tional reforms, Spain and Greece still retain some of the traditional features of the Southern European
welfare regime, such as:

• under-financed and ineffective social services (total social expenditure in Greece had
reached its highest level, 26% of GDP in 2004, as compared to Spain, where it remained
at 20% of GDP);

• the residual and fragmented character of the social protection systems, covering only
those with a full-time and uninterrupted career;

• clientelism and patronage networks that distribute social benefits to favoured groups, cre-
ating a polarization between the more and the less privileged segments of the population;

• the central role of the family in providing care and support to its vulnerable members. In
addition to its traditional functions, the family has additionally become the main ‘shock
absorber’ against high youth unemployment and a protracted school-to-work and youth-
to-adulthood transition (Karamessini, 2008a); ⁴¹

• the persistence of the male breadwinner model, despite its gradual erosion resulting from
the growth of the dual-earner model. As a result, social security systems continue to be
organized around the concept of derived rights (male breadwinner/female carer). Ad-
ditionally, the male bread-winner continues to enjoy high levels of job security, owing to
the urgency of safeguarding the earnings and the career of the sole family bread-winner
(Esping-Andersen, 1999);

41 Unlike Northern Europe, in the Southern Europe, young adults leave their parental home at marriage and continue
to receive family support during their adult life in many areas (housing, childcare, daily chores, unforeseen expenses,
etc.).

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