Decommodification and beyond: A Comparative Analysis of Work-Injury Programmes

This article examines work-injury programmes in different welfare states. The article’s goals are to provide a better understanding of these programmes and to further develop concepts for comparison between welfare states. Work-injury programmes are a component in the social security systems of most countries throughout the world. Nevertheless, cross-national comparative research into this field of social protection has been very limited. This article undertakes a quantitative comparison of work-injury programmes in 10 different welfare states, which represent various types of welfare regimes. Decommodification and self-development are the two key concepts that serve as a basis for the comparison and indexes measuring these two concepts are constructed. The findings of the study indicate that social-democratic welfare states, followed by Australia and Israel, have workinjury programmes with the greatest potential for decommodification and self-development. By contrast, work-injury programmes in liberal welfare states such as Britain and the United States have a low decommodifying and self-development potential.