The normative foundation of the social investment welfare state

European welfare states have experienced a groundswell of reform. In the process, the Social Investment Approach emerged as a policy compass to adapt social policy to  the post-industrial economic realities and ageing societies. Social investment reform advocacy is framed as a positive-sum solution to the equity-efficiency trade-off. However, the important dimension of normative recalibration in the social investment turn—its focus on dual-earner families, (gendered) labour markets, cumulative disadvantage, capacitation, and inter-generational fairness—has gone under the radar. The objective of this project is to engage in the overdue exploration of the normative foundations of the social investment welfare state.