The wealth and welfare of nations in change

For the international comparison of societies the author does propose a system of continuous social observation, based on a discussion of moral values in social philosophy, which results in eight performance criteria to compare the ''welfare of nations'' or the living conditions: prosperity; environmental sustainability; innovation; social security by providing support in case of risk and precautionary through investments in education; equality of participation; appreciation of peculiarities (womenfriendliness and migrant-friendliness); social integration; autonomy (''freedom of choice and capabilities''). The change of prosperity and welfare is considered in the context of the world financial crisis and the subsequent great recession. In the teaching research project of the author, they have developed the operationalization of the socially desirable goals in a first step from 2004 and made reports for 28 countries. They have further developed the operationalization and finally included 43 countries in the comparison (Holtmann, Dieter: Prosperity and Welfare of Nations in Change. (In German) Aachen 2014: Shaker). In the next step, they have supplemented this systematic country comparison by case studies of the 43 individual countries (Holtmann, Dieter: Politics, Economy and Society in an International Comparison. (In German) Aachen 2015: Shaker). In his approach, the author does not assume a single path of modernization in the direction of growth, participation and inclusion, but differentiate - in extension of the '' three worlds of welfare capitalism'' by Esping-Andersen (1990) - for the considered countries (including all EU members) at least the following six institutional development paths of modernization: The social democratic (universalist) path, the economically liberal path, the status-conserving path, the ''familistic'' path , the development of the group of post-socialist countries, that are in a process of differentiation, and the productivist path of economic rise in East Asia. As parts of society to analyze the social structures after the world financial crisis are discussed: Education and education regimes; service societies and employment; welfare regimes and social protection (education and social support in the case of risk); prosperity and poverty; individualization and its counter-movements; social inequalities between women and men; summarizing comparison of living conditions in the various countries and welfare regimes.