Immigration and support for redistributive social policy: Does multiculturalism matter?

Kwon, Ronald; Curran, Michaela

doi:10.1177/0020715216685767

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 74 publications

(159 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Relying on International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) data from 17 Western countries, Brady and Finnigan (2014) provide evidence that immigration undermines support for the government provision of jobs but report mixed results regarding its relationship to other social welfare policies. Kwon and Curran (forthcoming) find similar patterns using the same data but from only 13 countries. Finally, two recent studies assessed the impact of immigration on opposition to immigrants’ social rights (Mewes and Mau, 2012; Reeskens and Van Oorschot, 2012), yet, results do not demonstrate a direct relationship between a country’s share of foreigners and welfare chauvinism.…”

Section: Diversity and Welfare Attitudesmentioning

confidence: 52%

Immigration and the welfare state: A cross-regional analysis of European welfare attitudes

Eger

Breznau

2017

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A growing body of research connects diversity to anti-welfare attitudes and lower levels of social welfare expenditure, yet most evidence comes from analyses of US states or comparisons of the United States to Europe. Comparative analyses of European nation-states, however, yield little evidence that immigration – measured at the country-level – reduces support for national welfare state programs. This is not surprising, given that research suggests that the impact of diversity occurs at smaller, sub-national geographic units. Therefore, in this article, we test the hypothesis that immigration undermines welfare attitudes by assessing the impact of immigration measured at the regional-level on individual-level support for redistribution, a comprehensive welfare state, and immigrants’ social rights. To do this, we combine data from the European Social Survey with a unique regional dataset compiled from national censuses, Eurostat, and the European Election Database (13 countries, 114 regions, and 23,213 individuals). Utilizing multilevel modeling, we find a negative relationship between regional percent foreign-born and support for redistribution as well as between regional percent foreign-born and support for a comprehensive welfare state. Objective immigration, however, does not increase opposition to immigrants’ social rights (i.e. welfare chauvinism). We discuss the implications of these results and conclude that traditional welfare state attitudes and welfare chauvinism are distinct phenomena that should not be conflated in future research.

show abstract

Section: Diversity and Welfare Attitudesmentioning

confidence: 52%

Immigration and the welfare state: A cross-regional analysis of European welfare attitudes

Eger

Breznau

2017

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Of previous within-country studies, two using European Social Survey (ESS) data identify a statistical impact of income inequality on support for redistribution (Jaeger 2013;Schmidt-Catran 2016) while one study finds no overall support despite some unique country-specific associations (Gonthier 2017). Three studies using the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) find no striking evidence (Brady and Finnigan 2014;Kerr 2014;Kwon and Curran 2016). An alternative study by VanHeuvelen (2017) (Alt and Iversen 2017;Dallinger 2010;Lübker 2004;Lupu and Pontusson 2011;Steele 2015).…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 97%

No generalizable effect of income inequality on public support for governmental redistribution among rich democracies 1987–2010

Breznau

Hommerich

2019

Social Science Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We revisit a longstanding hypothesis that the public become more supportive of redistributive policy as income inequality rises. Previous tests of this hypothesis using various forms of general least squares regressions are inconclusive. We suggest improvements and alternatives to these tests. Using the World Inequality Data and International Social Survey Program we analyze 91 surveys in 18 countries. We incorporate three alternative measures of income inequality, including a measure of liberalization as a known cause of income inequality increases. We also employ two alternative test formats that arguably reflect the data generating model better than a least squares regression. The first is vector-autoregression aiming to account for path dependency of public opinion and income inequality, and the endogeneity between them. Next is qualitative comparative analysis to capture sets of conditions that collectively should have led to inequality having an impact on public opinion. Finally, we run our regression models separately for low and high socio-economic strata. In all tests we find no measurable impact of income inequality on support for redistribution. From a macro-perspective we argue that this suggests ruling out a general effect that exists across space and time, and focusing instead on theory to explain why there should not be a general effect. Some arguments suggest the public are normatively opposed to what sounds like 'handouts'. We therefore discuss model specification via theory, but also Type II errors, statistical power and the limitations of our conclusions.

show abstract

“…Of previous within-country studies, two using European Social Survey (ESS) data identify a statistical impact of income inequality on support for redistribution (Jaeger 2013; Schmidt-Catran 2016) while one study finds no overall support despite some unique country-specific associations (Gonthier 2017). Three studies using the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) find no striking evidence (Brady and Finnigan 2014;Kerr 2014;Kwon and Curran 2016). An alternative study by VanHeuvelen (2017) pools together ESS, ISSP 'Social Inequality' and ISSP 'Role of Government' modules to create the largest set of data points for analyzing this research question thus far, including 39 countries with up-to-18 time points per country.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Generalizable Effect of Income Inequality on Public Support for Governmental Redistribution among Rich Democracies, 1980-2010

Breznau¹,

Hommerich²

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We revisit a longstanding hypothesis that the public become more supportive of redistributive policy as income inequality rises. Previous tests of this hypothesis using various forms of general least squares regressions are inconclusive. We suggest improvements and alternatives to these tests. Using the World Inequality Data and International Social Survey Program we analyze 91 surveys in 19 countries. We incorporate three alternative measures of income inequality, including a measure of liberalization as a known cause of income inequality increases. We also employ two alternative test formats that arguably reflect the data generating model better than a least squares regression. The first is vector-autoregression aiming to account for path dependency of public opinion and income inequality, and the endogeneity between them. Next is qualitative comparative analysis to capture sets of conditions that collectively should have led to inequality having an impact on public opinion. Finally, we run our regression models separately for low and high socio-economic strata. In all tests we find no measurable impact of income inequality on support for redistribution. From a macro-perspective we argue that this suggests ruling out a general effect that exists across space and time, and focusing instead on theory to explain why there should not be a general effect. Some arguments suggest the public are normatively opposed to what sounds like ‘handouts’. We therefore discuss model specification via theory, but also Type II errors, statistical power and the limitations of our conclusions.

show abstract

Immigration and support for redistributive social policy: Does multiculturalism matter?

Cited by 23 publications

References 74 publications

Immigration and the welfare state: A cross-regional analysis of European welfare attitudes

Immigration and the welfare state: A cross-regional analysis of European welfare attitudes

No generalizable effect of income inequality on public support for governmental redistribution among rich democracies 1987–2010

No Generalizable Effect of Income Inequality on Public Support for Governmental Redistribution among Rich Democracies, 1980-2010

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About