Over the past decade, the notion of ‘social investment’ (SI) has gained considerable traction in the political debates over welfare state futures. The multifaceted character of SI policy interventions, the effects of policy complementarities and interactions for different social groups and generational cohorts, and the challenge of delineating effects across different time dimensions, we argue, are not (yet) properly addressed by current empirical research. This paper contributes to reorienting the measurement of SI returns into a longer-term perspective, conceptualising them as people’s work- and welfare- related outcomes. It operationalises in a novel fashion macro-level data across OECD countries to analyse the medium-term aggregate effects of SI stock, flow and buffer policies with a focus on arguably the most critical stages in the post-industrial life-cycle course: transition into employment and family formation. Our findings imply that the so-called ‘Matthew effects’, following the biblical proverb ‘to him that hath shall be given’, identified in previous research stem from a measurement of SI returns conceptualised in a short-term redistributive perspective. Moving on to longer-term returns to SI policies at the societal level reveals positive outcomes for families with children.

在过去的十年中，“社会投资”（SI）的概念在有关福利国家期货的政治辩论中获得了相当大的关注。我们认为，SI干预政策的多面性，对不同社会群体和世代代代相传的政策互补性和相互作用的影响，以及在不同时间维度上划定影响的挑战，目前的实证研究尚未（尚未）正确解决。本文有助于将SI回报的度量重新定位为长期的观点，并将其概念化为与工作和福利相关的结果。它以经合组织国家/地区的新型时尚宏观数据进行操作，以分析SI库存，流量和缓冲的中期总体影响可以说是后工业生命周期过程中最关键阶段的政策：过渡到就业和家庭组建。我们的发现暗示，在先前的研究中，遵循圣经谚语“应给予他”的所谓“马修效应”源于对短期再分配视角下概念化的SI收益的衡量。向社会一级的SI政策寻求长期回报会为有孩子的家庭带来积极的成果。