ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses how households in precarious prosperity deal with and organise their everyday life in countries within different welfare regimes. Welfare regimes consist of specific institutional settings the interplay of the state, markets, communities, household/family relationships through which resources are distributed and access to resources is justified. They shape opportunity structures for everyday life and determine the way households are able to make use of these structures to achieve and manage socio-economic well-being and deal with the contingencies they face in various life domains. Spain shared similar traits in 1970s with Chile and Costa Rica, yet it differs substantially today and has been the severely struck by the economic crisis. In comparison to Switzerland, the other three countries' welfare regimes are characterised by less-developed social policy regimes, segmented social insurance models reflecting the difference between employment in formal and informal markets, fragmented safety nets on a basic level, and strong reliance on women's unpaid labour for care and well-being.
