scholarly journals Welfare state structure, inequality, and public attitudes towards progressive taxation

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 823-850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Berens ◽  
Margarita Gelepithis
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
State Structure ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Progressive Taxation ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Tax Progressivity ◽  
Country Level

Abstract Recent research indicates that while higher tax levels are politically unpopular, greater tax progressivity is not. However, there remain unanswered questions regarding public support for more progressive taxation. In particular, little is known about how individual attitudes towards tax progressivity are affected by their institutional context. Building on existing theories of redistribution, this article develops the argument that the structure of the welfare state shapes public attitudes towards progressive taxation—support for progressive taxation among both average and high-income households is undermined by ‘pro-poor’ welfare spending. We support our argument with a cross-sectional analysis of rich democracies, interacting household income with country-level indicators of welfare state structure. In doing so, we contribute a micro-level explanation for the paradoxical macro-level phenomenon that larger, more redistributive welfare states tend to be financed by less progressive tax systems.

‘I am not alone’: Understanding public support for the welfare state

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 768-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klarita Gërxhani ◽  
Ferry Koster
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Subjective Assessment ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
General Belief ◽  
Cross Country

This article explores to what extent and how individuals’ welfare state attitudes relate to their subjective assessment of the available social support. Using various sociological and sociopsychological theories the authors first provide a theoretical analysis of the micro–macro links between perceived social support (micro), social trust in support availability (macro) and public attitudes towards welfare states (micro). An empirical test based on a large cross-country dataset of 31,122 respondents in 25 European countries shows that the more welfare is provided by the state, the less of it is desired in countries where individuals have the general belief that they can rely on each other for support. Importantly, only when considered jointly, do welfare state provision and social trust in support availability become essential in explaining welfare state attitudes.

scholarly journals Public attitudes towards a European minimum income benefit: How (perceived) welfare state performance and expectations shape popular support

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Baute ◽  
Bart Meuleman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Policy Proposal ◽  
Minimum Income ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
National Welfare

The economic crisis and the unequal degree to which it has affected European Union (EU) member states have fuelled the debate on whether the EU should take responsibility for the living standards of European citizens. The current article contributes to this debate by investigating for the first time public support for an EU-wide minimum income benefit scheme. Through an analysis of data from the European Social Survey 2016, our results reveal that diverging national experiences and expectations are crucial in understanding why Europeans are widely divided on the implementation of such a benefit scheme. The analysis shows that (1) welfare state generosity and perceived welfare state performance dampen support, (2) those expecting that ‘more Europe’ will increase social protection levels are much more supportive, (3) the stronger support for a European minimum income benefit in less generous welfare states is explained by more optimistic expectations about the EU’s domestic impact and (4) lower socioeconomic status groups are more supportive of this policy proposal. These findings can be interpreted in terms of sociotropic and egocentric self-interests, and illustrate how (perceived) performance of the national welfare state and expectations about the EU’s impact on social protection levels shape support for supranational social policymaking.

scholarly journals Does Government Support Respond to Governments’ Social Welfare Rhetoric or their Spending? An Analysis of Government Support in Britain, Spain and the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1407-1429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Bernardi ◽  
James Adams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Left And Right

Issue ownership theory posits that when social welfare is electorally salient, left-wing parties gain public support by rhetorically emphasizing social welfare issues. There is less research, however, on whether left-wing governing parties benefit from increasing social welfare spending. That is, it is not known whether leftist governments gain from acting on the issues they rhetorically emphasize. This article presents arguments that voters will not react to governments’ social welfare rhetoric, and reviews the conflicting arguments about how government support responds to social welfare spending. It then reports time-series, cross-sectional analyses of data on government support, governments’ social welfare rhetoric and social welfare spending from Britain, Spain and the United States, that support the prediction that government rhetoric has no effects. The article estimates, however, that increased social welfare spending sharply depresses support for both left- and right-wing governments. These findings highlight a strategic dilemma for left-wing governments, which lose public support when they act on their social welfare rhetoric by increasing welfare spending.

scholarly journals Trade and Redistribution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
World War I ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
World War ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Progressive Taxation ◽  
Tax Progressivity ◽  
Trade Politics ◽  
Sectional Analysis

What explains variation in tax progressivity before World War I? I argue that trade politics shaped the emergence of progressive taxation. If labor could provide a useful ally, trade policy coalitions meant compromise on redistributive demands: progressive taxes, especially where inequality was lower. In time-series cross-sectional analysis, I find that trade interest proximity between labor and elites was associated with more progressive taxation in ten European countries between 1870 and 1913 under conditions of low inequality. The coalition and compromise mechanism is evident in subnational evidence from Britain. Where constituency interests favored free trade, Liberal-Labour electoral alliance was more likely in 1906, and the local MP was more likely to support the 1909 `People's Budget' for progressive taxation.

scholarly journals Revealing the “Hidden welfare state”: How policy information influences public attitudes about tax expenditures

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino ◽  
Suzanne Mettler
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Tax Expenditures ◽  
Policy Information

In this article, we explore how specific policy information shapes public opinion toward the “hidden welfare state” of tax expenditures. These politically and socioeconomically consequential policies—most of which bestow their greatest benefits on upper-income people—are complex and opaque, and scholars’ understanding of citizen attitudes toward them is limited. In response, we use a randomized, general population, online survey experiment to test the effects of providing people with varying amounts and kinds of information about three policies. We find that learning the basic design and rationale of key tax expenditures tends to increase public support for them. However, when informed of the distributive effects of the two policies that favor upper-income people, subjects become much less supportive of these policies. Moreover, policy-specific information appears to help subjects align their preferences with their immediate material interests. Learning the upward tilt of tax expenditures especially makes lower- and middle-income people less supportive of the policies. Our results suggest that if political elites, government administrators and news media routinely offered clear information about tax expenditures, public opinion toward the hidden welfare state would be more firmly grounded. By virtue of their design, these policies discourage public awareness of their mechanisms and distributive effects. Still, greater informational outreach regarding complicated and arcane tax expenditures could bolster public accountability for government actions that favor economically narrow and privileged segments of the population.

Redistribution and the Quality of Government: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Bilyana Petrova
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract The welfare state literature has largely ignored the impact of a country's quality of government on its levels of redistribution. Using cross-sectional time-series analysis of twenty-one Central and Eastern European countries, this article shows that environments characterized by higher levels of corruption, rampant bureaucratic inefficiency and ineffective enforcement of the rule of law are associated with lower levels of redistribution. Poor government directly affects the supply side of the redistribution process by hindering countries’ ability to allocate funds to redistribution and deliver them to their beneficiaries. Contrary to existing demand-oriented perspectives, the proposed causal mechanism does not blame lower redistribution on the lack of public support for the welfare state. Rather, it focuses on the capacity of states to adopt and implement inequality-reducing policies. The results are robust to numerous extensions and model specifications.

scholarly journals The political economy of immigration and welfare state effort: evidence from Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Welfare Generosity

AbstractThis article explores whether immigration plays a role in determining national welfare state effort in 16 European countries. It examines the relationship between stocks of migrants, the foreign-born population, on two different indicators of welfare state effort – social welfare spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) and a welfare generosity index. The nexus between immigration and welfare is a controversial and highly sensitive political issue, and as such it typically divides opinion. Traditionally, it has been argued that increases in immigration create pressures for governments to reduce levels of social welfare provision. By building on theories and results from the political economy literature, this article provides further evidence on the debate through using a fresh approach to operationalize welfare state effort. The empirical results show that the foreign-born population has a positive and statistically significant relationship with social welfare spending and no statistically significant association with the welfare generosity index. The findings provide no evidence to support the hypothesis that the higher levels of immigration lead to reduced levels of social welfare provision. On the contrary, these findings lend support to the view that increasing immigration leads to welfare state expansion rather than retrenchment, and that European welfare states remain resilient in the face of the globalization of migration.

The case for welfare state universalism, or the lasting relevance of the paradox of redistribution

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Jacques ◽  
Alain Noël
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Robin Hood ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
Original Argument ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Cross Sectional Design

In 1998, Walter Korpi and Joakim Palme proposed a political and institutional explanation to account for the greater redistributive success of welfare states that relied more on universal than on targeted programmes. Effective redistribution, they argued, resulted less from a Robin Hood logic – taking from the rich to give to the poor – than from a broad and egalitarian provision of services and transfers. Hence, the paradox: a country obtained more redistribution when it took from all to give to all than when it sought to take from the rich to help the poor. Recent studies, however, failed to confirm the existence of this paradox. This article suggests that the original argument was theoretically sound but inadequately operationalized. Korpi and Palme measured universalism indirectly, not by the design or character of social programmes, but rather by their outcomes, namely, by their income effects. These outcomes, however, are influenced by exogenous factors. We use two new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicators to capture universalism directly, through the institutional design of social programmes: (1) the percentage of social benefits that are means or income tested and (2) the proportion of private spending in total social expenditures. These two indicators are combined into a universalism index and tested with a time-series cross-sectional design for 20 OECD countries between 2000 and 2011. This approach, we argue, better captures institutional design, in a way that is consistent with Korpi and Palme’s original argument, and it suggests that there is still a paradox of redistribution in the 21st-century welfare state.

scholarly journals Public perception of ethical issues related to COVID-19 control measures in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia: A cross-sectional survey

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teck Chuan Voo ◽  
Angela Ballantyne ◽  
Ng Chirk Jenn ◽  
Benjamin J. Cowling ◽  
Jingyi Xiao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Monitoring Devices

AbstractBackgroundSeveral countries have implemented control measures to limit SARS-CoV-2 spread, including digital contact tracing, digital monitoring of quarantined individuals and testing of travelers. These raise ethical issues around privacy, personal freedoms and equity. However, little is known regarding public acceptability of these measures.MethodsIn December 2020, we conducted surveys among 3635 respondents in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia to understand public perceptions on the ethical acceptability of COVID-19 control measures.FindingsHong Kong respondents were much less supportive of digital contact tracing and monitoring devices than those in Malaysia and Singapore. Around three-quarters of Hong Kong respondents perceived digital contact tracing as an unreasonable restriction of individual freedom; <20% trusted that there were adequate local provisions preventing these data being used for other purposes. This was the opposite in Singapore, where nearly three-quarters of respondents agreed that there were adequate data protection rules locally. In contrast, only a minority of Hong Kong respondents viewed mandatory testing and vaccination for travelers as unreasonable infringements of privacy or freedom. Less than two-thirds of respondents in all territories were willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, with a quarter of respondents undecided. However, support for differential travel restrictions for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals was high in all settings.InterpretationOur findings highlight the importance of socio-political context in public perception of public health measures and emphasize the need to continually monitor public attitudes towards such measures to inform implementation and communication strategies.FundingThis work was funded by the World Health Organization.Research in contextEvidence before this studyWe searched PubMed and Google Scholar for research articles published between 29 February 2020 to 20 January 2021 to identify empirical studies on public perception of restrictive and control measures imposed during COVID-19. We used the following terms: “COVID-19”, “SARS-COV-2”, “pandemic”, “public”, “population”, “survey”, “cross-sectional”, “national”, “international”, “perception”, “attitudes”, “opinions”, “views”, “acceptance”, “acceptability”, “support”, “ethics”, “restrictive measures”, “restrictions”, “control measures”, travel”, “contact tracing”, “testing”, “tests”, “quarantine”, “monitoring”, “vaccines” “vaccination”, “immunity”, “certificates”, “passports”, “digital”, “applications”, “apps”, “mandatory” and “compulsory”. We found 4 peer-reviewed publications: three population surveys on public acceptance of and ethical issues in digital contact tracing in France, Jordan, and Ireland, and one population survey on perceptions of immunity and vaccination certificates in Geneva, Switzerland. We found no studies that studied the relative acceptance of different types of control measures.Added valueThere is a paucity of literature on public perception of the ethics of control measures that have been or may be implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we found differing levels of public support in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia for digital contact tracing, wearable quarantine monitoring devices, and mandatory testing and vaccination for travelers. Hong Kong respondents sharply differed from Singapore and Malaysia respondents on perceptions of risks and benefits, the extent of intrusion into individual freedom, and assurance of privacy and data protection related to use of digital contact tracing and monitoring devices. These differences are likely to be substantially influenced by socio-political climate and governmental trust. Although less than two-thirds of respondents in all territories expressed a willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19, we found high support for differential travel restrictions for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in all settings.Implications of all the available evidenceOur survey provides evidence of strong public support of vaccination requirements for travelers within an Asian context, and differential restrictions for vaccinated and non-vaccinated travelers. It highlights the importance of wider socio-political influences on public perception and ethical issues related to control measures and emphasizes the need to continually monitor public attitudes towards such measures to inform implementation and communication strategies.

scholarly journals Informal employment and poor self-perceived health in Latin America and the Caribbean: a gender-based comparison between countries and welfare states in a pooled analysis of 176,786 workers

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mireia Utzet ◽  
Ferran Botías ◽  
Michael Silva-Peñaherrera ◽  
Aurelio Tobías ◽  
Fernando G. Benavides
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Perceived Health ◽  
Pooled Analysis ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Informal Employment ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Informal Workers

Abstract Background More than half of the working population in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries is engaged in informal employment. The few previous studies indicate that this employment condition could have negative consequences for workers’ health. The aim of the present study was to estimate the association between self-perceived health and informality in LAC countries according to gender and welfare state type. Methods The cross-sectional study based on different working conditions and health national surveys was carried out in 13 LAC countries between 2012 and 2018. A sample of 176,786 workers was selected from these surveys. The association between health and informality was estimated using Poisson regression. Finally, a random effects meta-analysis was carried out by country. All results were stratified by sex and type of welfare state (statalist or familialist). Results Informal workers reported significantly worse health than formal workers, for both women (1.28 [95% CI 1.14-1.43]) and men (1.30 [1.12-1.50]). This difference was broader and more significant in countries with statalist welfare state regimes, among both women (1.40 [1.22-1.60]) and men (1.51 [1.30-1.74]), than in familialist regime countries (1.19 [1.03-1.38] and 1.24 [1.03-1.49], respectively). Conclusions This study provides strong evidence of the association between informal employment and worker health. Welfare states appear to have a modifying effect on this association. The transition from the informal to the formal labour market in LAC is essential to improving the health of the population.

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