Exploring Attitudes Towards the Welfare State: Students' Views in Eight Democracies

Abstract

We explore the dimensionality of attitudes towards the welfare state among university students in eight countries representing four worlds of welfare: liberal, radical, conservative and social democratic. We use new data from cross-nationally comparable 25-item questionnaires to derive a two-level bi-factorial hierarchical model that specifies six different attitude facets. These facets are clustered into two distinct sets of attitudes: the 'market-based frame', which entails (a) individualism, (b) work ethic and (c) internal attribution of inequality and the 'welfare-statist frame', which entails (d) egalitarian redistribution, (e) broad scope of welfare and (f) external attribution of social inequality. In line with our expectations, respondents across different regime types structured their welfare state attitudes according to the six a priori defined types of attitudes and two sets of opposing attitudes. The study also found that the six facets are differently affected by regime type, which further corroborates our argument that the construct of welfare attitudes is complex and inherently multidimensional. IntroductionThis article proposes to explore a new approach to study the structure of citizens' attitudes towards the welfare state in eight democracies. We ask how citizens across different welfare regimes organise and integrate their welfare attitudes across different dimensions and whether convergence can be found in attitude patterns across different regime types. To do so, we need to understand 'what welfare programmes do' and how they interact with households and labour markets in the production and allocation of welfare. The analytical focus by

Cultural Transmission of Work-Welfare Attitudes and the Intergenerational Correlation in Welfare Receipt

“…13 We explicitly distinguish between these two dimensions of work-welfare views because preliminary analysis revealed that the variation in the data was not adequately described by a single, latent work-welfare attitude. Moreover, this distinction is consistent with Sabbagh and Vanhuysse's (2006) results which also suggest that preferences for egalitarian redistribution can be differentiated from beliefs about the source of social inequality.…”

“…9 Specifically, Sabbagh and Vanhuysse (2006) argue that attitudes towards the welfare state can be understood in the context of two competing ideological frameworks; one based on markets and the other based on a welfare state. The market-based perspective is associated with a strong work ethic, a focus on individual responsibility, and a view that social inequality is driven primarily by individuals' actions.…”

“…The market-based perspective is associated with a strong work ethic, a focus on individual responsibility, and a view that social inequality is driven primarily by individuals' actions. In contrast, the welfare-statist perspective is characterized by a desire for egalitarian redistribution, support for universal benefits, and a view that social inequality stems from unconstrained market forces rather than individual characteristics (see Sabbagh and Vanhuysse 2006). Drawing upon this conceptual framework, we begin by creating a series of seven indicator variables which take the value of one for responses that are consistent with the market-based frame and zero for responses that are consistent with the welfare-state frame (see Appendix Table A2).…”

“…The disadvantage is that the model is complex and the resulting estimates can be difficult to interpret (Ribar et al, 2006). Sabbagh and Vanhuysse, 2006, and Appendix Table A2). This interpretation of η * c and η * p will be born out by the data, however, only if all λ parameters are strictly positive after we have imposed the identification restrictions.…”

Who Cuts Back and When? The Politics of Delays in Social Expenditure Cutbacks, 1980–2005

“…And while the fiscal pressures to reduce welfare spending are strong, public support for welfare programmes remains high (e.g. Boeri et al 2001;Sabbagh and Vanhuysse 2006;Svallfors 2003). Efforts to scale down the welfare state would therefore seem to involve a high risk of electoral punishment.…”