Measuring the Turkish Welfare State: A Multidimensional Approach

ABSTRACT This article develops a multidimensional approach to capture the multiple dimensions of welfare states around the world. We know a lot about why we need to take the multidimensional character of welfare states seriously. There is, however, no consensus in the literature on which dimensions to focus on. Nor is there agreement among welfare state researchers on how to bring them together in a single framework. We aim to advance the literature by developing a framework based on the key dimensions of overall size, coverage, programmatic composition, and generosity. We bring them together in the study of a middle‐income country, Turkey, to capture multiple dimensions of the same welfare state. To do this, we analyse data on social spending and social rights in a complementary way. For social spending, we rely on the OECD's Social Expenditure Database. For social rights, we rely on original data on Turkey that we generated for three social rights databases: Social Citizenship Indicator Program (SCIP), Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset 2 (CWED 2), and Social Assistance and Minimum Income Protection Interim Dataset (SaMip). We aim to make three main contributions. First, we develop a multidimensional framework to provide a holistic analysis of welfare state development. Second, we introduce an original dataset on social rights in Turkey. Third, we highlight the value of our multidimensional approach by helping resolve hot button issues on welfare state change in post‐1980 Turkey. We conclude that this multidimensional approach is capable of effectively capturing the complex dimensions of contemporary welfare states.