scholarly journals Granting immigrants access to social benefits? How self-interest influences support for welfare state restrictiveness

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Degen ◽  
Theresa Kuhn ◽  
Wouter van der Brug
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Large Body ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

In the context of large-scale migration within and into Europe, the question of whether and under which conditions immigrants should be granted access to social benefits in the country of destination is of high political relevance. A large body of research has studied natives’ attitudes towards giving immigrants access to the welfare state, while research on attitudes of immigrants themselves is scarce. Focusing on the impact of self-interest, we compare immigrants and native citizens in their attitudes towards granting immigrants access to the welfare state. We identify three mechanisms through which self-interest can influence these attitudes: immigrant origin, socio-economic status and – for first-generation immigrants only – incorporation into the host society. We test our expectations using cross-national data from the European Social Survey round 2008. The findings suggest that self-interest is indeed one of the factors that motivate attitudes towards welfare state restrictiveness among natives and immigrants, but also point at relevant exceptions to this pattern.

scholarly journals Immigrant Presence, Group Boundaries and Support for the Welfare State in Western European Societies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nate Breznau ◽  
Maureen A. Eger
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Group Boundaries ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

The intersection of group dynamics and socioeconomic status theories is applied as a framework for the puzzling relationship of immigration and support for the welfare state in Western Europe. Group dynamics theories suggest that how individuals define their group boundaries moderates the impact of immigration on support for the welfare state. Immigrant presence should have the strongest effects for those with exclusive national group boundaries; weaker for those with conditionally inclusive boundaries based on reciprocity; and weakest or non-existent for those with inclusive group boundaries. Group boundaries should interact with material self-interest leading individuals with less material security who are more likely to face social risks to be more supportive of the welfare state. Using data from the 4th European Social Survey linked to regional and national data we find that group boundary salience plays a large moderating role in the relationship of immigration and native support for the welfare state, and that this role is intricately linked to material self-interest. Group dynamics should therefore be viewed in conjunction with existing structural welfare state theories as opposed to an alternative or isolated mechanism.

Doing It for the Kids? The Determinants of Attitudes towards Public Childcare in Unified Germany

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
ACHIM GOERRES ◽  
MARKUS TEPE
Keyword(s):  
Family Involvement ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractIn order to explain why people differ in their attitudes towards public childcare, we present a theoretical framework that integrates four causal mechanisms: regime socialisation, political ideology, family involvement and material self-interest. Estimation results obtained from multivariate regressions on the 2002 German General Social Survey and replications on the 2008/9 European Social Survey can be condensed into three statements: (1) Regime socialisation is the single most important determinant of attitudes toward public childcare, followed by young age as an indicator of self-interest and political ideology. Family involvement does not have any sizeable impact. (2) Regime socialisation conditions the impact of some indicators of political ideology and family involvement on attitudes toward public childcare. (3) Despite a paradigmatic shift in policy, the dynamics of 2008 mirror those of 2002, highlighting the stability of inter-individual differences in support. The results suggest that the ‘shadow of communism’ still stretches over what people in the East expect from the welfare state and that individual difference in the demand for public childcare appears to be highly path-dependent.

scholarly journals Dualized trust: risk, social trust and the welfare state

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 875-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Kevins
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Generalized Trust ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract This article examines how labour market vulnerability and social policy interact to shape generalized trust. Drawing insights from the literature on dualization, I suggest that: (1) labour market outsiders will have lower levels of generalized trust due to their increased risk exposure; and (2) active labour market policies, by conditioning labour market vulnerability, can reduce the impact of outsiderness on trust. Leveraging within-country cleavages between insiders and outsiders therefore allows us to assess one possible mechanism behind the welfare state’s generation of trust, while at the same time holding cultural context and broader trust levels constant. Analysis of data from the 2008–2014 waves of the European Social Survey then provides evidence of the impact of outsiderness on trust and the ability of social policy to moderate that effect. The investigation thus sheds light on both an additional consequence of dualization and a mechanism linking the welfare state to generalized trust.

Popular preferences for a fully means-tested welfare provision model: social and cross-national divides in Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (11/12) ◽  
pp. 1455-1472
Author(s):  
Dimitri Gugushvili ◽  
Wim van Oorschot
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Multilevel Models ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Means Testing ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Welfare State

PurposeWhether welfare provision should be broad-based or selectively targeted at the poor is one of the most common themes in social policy discourse. However, empirical evidence concerning people's preferences about these distributive justice principles is very limited. The current paper aims to bridge this gap, by analyzing Europeans' opinions about a hypothetical transformation of the welfare state that would provide social transfers and services only to people on low incomes.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis draws on data from the 2016 European Social Survey and covers 21 countries. In order to understand what would motivate people to support the complete means testing of welfare provision, we use multilevel models with individual-level and contextual predictors.FindingsThe results show that the upper and middle classes are the most opposed to the idea, presumably as they would be the net losers from such a reform. Furthermore, our results indicate that more-egalitarian people show a higher level of support for means testing, even though the political left has traditionally promoted universalism. Some key characteristics of the welfare state also matter: People are more likely to endorse complete means testing in countries with less-generous provision and a higher incidence of poverty. However, the extent to which the existing welfare state relies on means testing has no influence on people's opinions about implementing a fully means-tested welfare model.Practical implicationsSome of the key findings are likely to be of interest to activists advocating on behalf of the poor and the socially vulnerable. Although it is generally assumed that universal provision is the best strategy to address the needs of disadvantaged people, our results suggest that from an electoral point of view, targeting within universalism may be a more appealing welfare strategy.Originality/valueThis paper details one of the very few studies to examine preferences for means-tested welfare provision in a comparative context. In addition, one of the contextual variables used in the analysis – the proportion of means-tested social benefits out of the total expenditure on social benefits – is unique to this study.

The welfare state criticism of the losers of modernization: How social experiences of resentment shape populist welfare critique

2021 ◽  
pp. 000169932199419
Author(s):  
Arno Van Hootegem ◽  
Koen Abts ◽  
Bart Meuleman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
Social Experiences ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Working People ◽  
Paradoxical Finding ◽  
The Welfare State

This article aims to explain the paradoxical finding that socio-economically vulnerable groups express more economic, moral and social criticism of the welfare state. As these groups generally benefit more from the welfare state and hold more egalitarian world views, their stronger criticism cannot be explained by the traditional frameworks of self-interest and ideology. As an alternative, we highlight the importance of social experiences of resentment as a source of discontent with welfare state performance. Our contribution argues that the dissatisfaction is embedded in a broader welfare populist critique that pits the hard-working people against the deceitful elite and welfare abusers. This welfare populism emerges from experiences of resentment related to the restructuring of group positions in the process of modernization. We differentiate between three types of discontent: economic status insecurity, group relative deprivation and social distrust. By applying structural equation modelling, we test whether resentful experiences mediate the relationship between the social structural position and welfare state criticism. Results indicate that relative deprivation consistently leads to more economic, moral and social criticism. Social distrust, moreover, stimulates a higher level of moral criticism. This study illustrates that resentment is indeed an important element for understanding the paradoxical relationship between social class and welfare state criticism.

Concrete Monsters of the Welfare State: Discussions of Brutalist Architecture on Social Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110193
Author(s):  
Max Holleran
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Welfare State

Brutalist architecture is an object of fascination on social media that has taken on new popularity in recent years. This article, drawing on 3,000 social media posts in Russian and English, argues that the buildings stand out for their arresting scale and their association with the expanding state in the 1960s and 1970s. In both North Atlantic and Eastern European contexts, the aesthetic was employed in publicly financed urban planning projects, creating imposing concrete structures for universities, libraries, and government offices. While some online social media users associate the style with the overreach of both socialist and capitalist governments, others are more nostalgic. They use Brutalist buildings as a means to start conversations about welfare state goals of social housing, free university, and other services. They also lament that many municipal governments no longer have the capacity or vision to take on large-scale projects of reworking the built environment to meet contemporary challenges.

Public and Private Social Welfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Willem Adema ◽  
Peter Whiteford
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Incorrect Measurement ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Distributional Impact ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter contributes to the discussion of public and private social welfare by drawing together recent information on these different ways of providing social benefits. It presents data on public social expenditure for 2015–17 and accounts for the impact of the tax system and private social expenditure to develop indicators on net social expenditure for 2015. The chapter shows that conventional estimates of gross public spending differ significantly from estimates of net public spending and net total social expenditure, leading to an incorrect measurement and ranking of total social welfare effort across countries.Just as importantly, the fact that total social welfare support is incorrectly measured implies that the outcomes of welfare state support may also be incorrectly measured. Thus, the main objectives of the chapter include considering the implications of this more comprehensive definition of welfare state effort for analysis of the distributional impact of the welfare state and for an assessment of the efficiency and incentive effects of different welfare state arrangements.

scholarly journals Hello pension, goodbye tension? The impact of work and institutions on older workers’ labor market participation in Europe

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Fleischmann ◽  
Ferry Koster ◽  
Pearl Dykstra ◽  
Joop Schippers
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Older Workers ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Labor Market Participation ◽  
Market Participation ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

To sustain the welfare state, several EU countries agreed to take measures aimed at increasing the labor market participation of older workers (European Commission 2001). In this study, we developed a framework integrating individual, work, and institutional characteristics in order to explain the labor market participation of older workers. While prior studies focused mainly on individual characteristics, the present analysis investigated the impact of work and institutions more closely using the European Social Survey. Multilevel analyses across 21 countries showed that work characteristics increased the benefits from work, hence increasing the likelihood of participation among older workers, and that the generosity of institutions discouraged older workers to remain in the labor market.

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