Abstract

The diffusion of the 'social investment' and 'active welfare state' paradigms, together with the changes of the different European welfare systems, highlights the need for considering education and social protection as a part of a single strategy for welfare. After showing the main features of the news welfare paradigms, the first aim of this article is to investigate how the contemporary literature has defined the relationship between education and social protection models. The second aim is to analyze the evolution of these policy sectors since the mid-nineties to nowadays. Through the analysis of the evolution of educational and social expenditures, this article investigates the presence of convergence or divergences trends among European countries.