Abstract:
With a view to better assessment of the roles played by social security and social policy in determining well-being, this presentation introduces the 'decommodified security ratio' (DSR), an instrument for evaluating an important duty of the social State, namely to maintain and improve people's economic security. To that end we describe the conventions for its use and analyse its main components in 24 countries in 1999-2001, by using the wave V of Luxembourg Income Survey database. From an analysis of the sources of economic security we then distinguish five different rationales.
