Parenthood, Well-Being Inequalities and Welfare State. Comparative Study of 20 European Countries

1. Income and wealth inequalities have represented a central issue of social policy analysis in the past. Nowadays the nature of inequalities and types of inequalities are changing. The paper aims at analysing the inequalities in subjective well-being and its relations to life chances and key life course events determined by welfare state. The main questions asked in the paper: Does the welfare state reduce inequalities in people’s overall subjective well-being? Does the welfare state reduce inequalities in people’s  satisfaction in various domains of life such as health or work-life balance?
2. The goal of the paper is to measure and compare, across European countries, inequalities in overall and domain subjective well-being (SWB) based on subjective indicators of well-being. Doing so allows for the evaluation of economic, social and demographic changes in societies and to provide information on well-being of different groups in the European societies.  So the first question asked is of diagnostic nature: what are the inequalities of well-being of parents and non-parents among European countries? Are there cross-national differences in the level of inequalities in subjective well-being of people belonging to the vulnerable groups due to specific life course stages (parenthood,  marital status)?
3.  The paper considers the broadly defined cross national, comparative analysis of contemporary family policy as well as gender regimes. The paper will assess if the  cross-national differences in the level of inequalities in subjective well-being of parents and non-parents can be related to the welfare state regimes or to specific policies.