Welfare regime types and global health: an emerging challenge

In recent years we have witnessed an increasing recognition of the political nature of population health.1–3 The fields of comparative social epidemiology and health policy research have experienced a surge since 2000.3–6 Among the most consistent set of findings brought about by this field of research has been an association between characteristics of the welfare state (that is, the mix of market, state and family in a country’s provision of goods and services) and population health.4 7–12 Most of these studies have followed the seminal work of Esping-Andersen13 and other authors14 15 that are in the tradition of power resources perspective.16 As a typology, Esping-Andersen classifies welfare states into three major types: social-democratic welfare states characterised by a high degree of “decommodification” (where more goods and services are provided by the state and fewer by the market); corporatist-conservative welfare states that emphasise the role of the family in addition to some state provision of services; …