Generosity of old‐age pensions for the self‐employed—A typology of European welfare states

Abstract

Research on pension generosity has so far used employees in standard employment as the reference point, ignoring nonstandard forms of employment such as the self‐employed. Moreover, as one of the major concepts of welfare state analysis, generosity has not been considered in research on the old‐age security of the self‐employed. Hence, there is a ‘missing link’ between the two strands in the literature. This paper aims to close this research gap by analysing the differences between 12 European welfare states regarding the generosity of old‐age pensions for the self‐employed. Based on the degree of strictness of access and benefit level, a typology is developed that results in four types of generosity: high generosity, low generosity, basic security and selective generosity.