This is a fascinating edited collection which seeks to answer a vital question: what is the relationship between social security and well-being? This question is particularly crucial at the moment as we face the threat of swinging public sector cuts over the next few years. If we can demonstrate that strong social security systems contribute to positive well-being, then perhaps such evidence can be used to help resist such cuts. This book certainly provides us with some such evidence through an eclectic mix of quantitative and theoretical chapters (but, surprisingly perhaps, no qualitative empirical research). However, the evidence is not as overwhelming as we might expect. While this is likely to be disappointing to those who come from a particular political viewpoint, it is testimony to the rigorous and objective methods used by the contributors to the book. It is also testimony to the methodological difficulties in carrying out such research.

The methodological challenges of doing cross-national comparative quantitative analysis in this field are clearly discussed in Stefansson's chapter. He provides some evidence that welfare state effort may be linked to some well-being outcomes, but he also advises future researchers to investigate specific policies in specific contexts rather than seek to explore the relationship between social security (as a whole) and well-being (in general) across many countries.

Jordan's chapter makes a similar point that we need to distinguish between social security systems that focus on paid work and those that focus on broader aspects of citizenship, such as engagement in community, cultural, political and social life. Dean makes a similar point in another chapter about the importance of encouraging and rewarding care work and a broader care ethic through social security. Countries with systems that promote these broader aspects of life, generally achieve higher levels of well-being than the narrowly employment-focused systems. Jordan concludes that a basic income system would be an appropriate way of doing this. Dean concludes that any system should be based on universalism, an ethic of care and a cosmopolitan notion of citizenship. Such a system, he argues, would deliver a more eudaimonic society (one characterised by ‘spiritual’ well-being) rather than a hedonic one (characterised more by the pursuit of ‘pleasure’). I am not too sure what is wrong with a bit of pleasure myself, but he makes a strong case for the ‘good’ society rather than simply a hedonistic one.

Rottiers’ chapter takes a more theoretical approach to the question, drawing on social relativity theory's ‘inequality paradox’. This apparent paradox suggests that while inequality is harmful to the well-being of those at the bottom of any distribution due to lack of social esteem, inequality is actually quite beneficial to those at the top because it provides them with well-being through enhanced esteem. Rottiers challenges this paradox, arguing that social security has an asymmetrical effect on inequality, bringing those at the bottom nearer to the middle but those at the top retain their distance from the middle. Those at the bottom therefore gain, while those at the top do not lose out. While I can see some logic to this, I am not entirely convinced by it. Social relativity theory may then suggest that those in the middle ‘suffer’ compared with a society where there is more of a gap between them and those further below them. I am also not convinced that society with a large gap between those in the middle and those at the top is a healthy one in relation to well-being. The work of Wilkinson, Marmot and others on status anxiety and inequality could have been drawn on more in relation to this.

Returning to more empirical research, Bonsang analyses the European Community Household Panel Survey and finds that income is correlated with well-being, particularly for younger people. It would have been interesting, perhaps, if he had delved deeper into this to explore (across different countries) whether those on higher incomes gain less happiness from the same increase in income as those on lower incomes. This is often quoted as a finding in the literature, but it is not always backed up with clear empirical data. The following two chapters from Holden, Kim and Fontes and then Andersen also use quantitative data analysis to explore, respectively, the impact of widowhood and participation in government training programmes on well-being. These chapters produce some interesting findings, but they are, perhaps, less relevant than the other chapters, to the central question outlined above.

The final chapter is by Bradshaw, the editor of the collection, and relates to his important research on child well-being. In this chapter, Bradshaw seeks to explain why the UK lies at the bottom of the league table of child well-being in OECD countries. He explores a range of possible explanations, including: the legacy of cuts in public spending on children in the 1980s and 1990s, persistently high rates of child poverty to date, inequality, family breakdown and educational attainment. He finds that family breakdown is not related to child well-being – what matters is how family breakdown is dealt with in different countries. He also finds that half of child well-being is explained by material well-being and both wealth and the size of the welfare state also make a difference. But he admits to being disappointed that he could not demonstrate a closer link between social security effort (expenditure) and outcomes, wondering if the analysis is too simple or the variables flawed or the lag effect responsible. But perhaps the explanation for the lack of strong relationship between social security and child well-being comes back to the point made by Stefansson in the first main chapter: context is key. Expenditure on social security should not necessarily be seen as indicating a generous welfare state. Spending on social security was relatively high during parts of the 1980s and early 1990s, but this was not because we had a generous welfare state. It was because we had high rates of unemployment, ‘inactivity’, low pay and inequality more generally. Bradshaw is right, however, that income is not the only relevant factor here, but, unfortunately, it is difficult to capture different cultures (e.g. individual/collective) and different varieties of capitalism in the existing datasets. Nevertheless, Bradshaw's chapter makes an excellent stab at answering a crucial question and the book, as a whole, also provides some extremely thought-provoking contributions to the debate about social security and well-being.