The Political Economy of Household Services in Europe

Over the past two decades, countries in Continental and Northern Europe have set up specific policies to promote the development of household services. This edited volume analyses the aims pursued with these policies, and the ways in which the issues have been framed. It examines the resultant labour market outcomes, focusing on the forms and quality of employment in the household services sector, and highlighting both the symbolic and economic effects of the construction of domestic and care services as low-skilled, low-value work. The authors demonstrate how these policies have actively contributed to the structuring of dualisms within the labour market, reinforcing social, gendered and ethnic divides. They also shed light on the distributive effects of these policies, which essentially benefit affluent households, and question their efficiency, not least with regard to their employment objectives.

Clement Carbonnier is Assistant Professor in Economics at University of Cergy-Pontoise, THEMA, France, and is affiliated to the LIEPP Research Centre of Sciences Po, France, where he is co-directing a research group dedicated to socio-fiscal policies. A large part of his work consists of the econometric ex-post evaluation of public policy impacts of such social and fiscal policies.

Nathalie Morel is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po, CEE and LIEPP, France. Her research interests include comparative social policy, political economy, social investment, fiscal welfare, household services, care policies and labour markets. She is the co-editor of Towards a Social Investment Welfare State? Ideas, Policies and Challenges (2012).