Social Vulnerability in Greece, 2008–2018: What is the Impact on Greece's Social Fabric?

While much ink has been spilled on identifying and analyzing the structure, peculiarities and deficiencies of the Southern European welfare states, the advent of the economic crisis in 2008 constituted a crunch point whereby the so-called welfare state was heavily staggered. That said, Greece's welfare state in light of the fiscal balancing and economic stabilization found itself under large pressure to live up to its increasing domestic social demands and external financial commitments. One of those policy areas that disproportionately underwent significant concessions (i.e. wide-ranging cutbacks on salaries, pensions, social benefits and subsidies) has been social policies. The objective of this paper is to study social vulnerability in Greece in times of crisis (2008-2018) and its socio-economic effects. Social vulnerability hereto refers to the weakening capacity of individuals to access, among others, two traditionally core areas of the welfare state i.e. education, employment and health services. To address the issue of social vulnerability, we shall use descriptive statistics and secondary data analysis i.e. official reports to examine five key variables (disposable income, class, profession, sex, urban/rural environment). In doing this, we will demonstrate that the aggravated economic environment in tandem with the ensuing reduction of the welfare state over the last decade has mostly increased inequality, job insecurity, financial stress and secondarily the ambitions leading to less social prosperity.