Abstract This paper addresses the long-standing issue of welfare state generosity measurement, by adopting a new perspective that focus on how welfare states are responding to new social risks linked to emergent forms of vulnerability. Namely, an emphasis is put on labour market polarization as well as childcare needs in the context of family model changes. Our work therefore constitutes a re-examination of Esping-Andersen’s The Worlds of Welfare State hypothesis and his main empirical application, made by revisioning both the analytical and methodological basis behind the so-called Welfare-State Decommodification Index. The results rest on a collection of public data from various statistical sources and point out that, at least concerning new social risks, the conventional division between social-democratic Nordic Europe and more conservative Continental Europe welfare regimes is somewhat blurred. Furthermore, dynamic versions of the indexes are constructed to examine the question of welfare state retrenchment and mixed-insights are found.
López et al. (Sun,) studied this question.