Two decades of research on ‘family policy change’: A qualitative systematic review

Family policy has risen to a mature field of comparative social policy, going hand-in-hand with the higher political salience of the policy area and its implications for gender equality. The evolving landscape of family-related policies across different countries boosted comparative family policy research interested in identifying trends, similarities, and differences in family policy development. Research sought to understand ‘policy changes’, e.g. attending to socioeconomic, political and ideational factors that influence family policies and their adaptations over time. Over the past 20 years, investigating and explaining ‘policy change’ has indeed been one of the core themes of comparative family policy, aiming to capture the complexity of policy dynamics within diverse environments. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the question of what ‘policy change’ is, what processes and dimensions of change it may include, and how these can be operationalised and measured. To explore conceptualisations and measurements of ‘policy change’ in comparative family policy, we conduct a qualitative systematic review using the PRISMA method. We conduct a Web of Science search to identify articles published between 2003 and 2023 which explicitly directed at investigating family policy change. We assume that the literature interested in family policy change would benefit from integrating the advancements in policy change research that have been developed by public policy research.