WWWforEurope Lecture Series: Social Investment and the European Monetary Union

The wave of social reform that has swept across Europe over the past three decades reveals trajectories of welfare adjustment that are more reconstructive than is often argued in mainstream academic research (and the media). In the aftermath of global financial crisis and its European correlates of the sovereign debt and Euro crisis, social investment is no longer dismissed as "fair weather" policy when times get rough. Social investment implies policies that "prepare" individuals and families to respond to new social risks of the competitive knowledge society, by investing in human capital stock from their early childhood on, rather than simply to "repair" damage after moments of economic or political crisis.