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.

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 The development of the Welfare State in Portugal: trends in social expenditure between 1938 and 2003

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fernando Carolo ◽  
José António Pereirinha
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Data Series ◽  
Social Risk ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Risk Protection ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis paper presents a data series on social expenditure in Portugal for the period 1938-2003. The series was built with the aim of identifying and characterizing the most significant phases in the process leading up to the current welfare state system in this country. The establishment of a social insurance (Previdência) in 1935 was one of the founding pillars of the Estado Novo (New State). Reforms to Social Welfare (Previdência Social) in 1962, while in the full throes of the New State, policy measures taken after the revolution of 1974 and a new orientation for social policy following the accession of Portugal to the European Economic Community (EEC) in the mid-1980s brought about significant transformations in the institutional organizational structure that provided welfare and conferred social rights in Portugal. To understand this process, knowledge is needed of the transformations to the institutional structures governing the organizations that provided welfare, welfare coverage in terms of the type of benefit and the population entitled to social risk protection, the magnitude of spending on benefits associated with these risks, as well as how benefits were allocated between the institutions. We built a data series for the period 1938-1980, which can then be matched to data already published in the OECD Social Expenditure Database from 1980 onwards. As a result, a consistent series for social expenditure from 1938 to 2003 was obtained. The methodology used to create the series enabled us to measure the impact of the variation in population coverage for social risks and the average generosity of benefits on the relative share of social expenditure in GDP. We present an interpretive reading for the full period, covering the New State and the Democracy from 1974, of the process of building the welfare state in Portugal.

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 Fiskalischer Wettbewerb und Einkommensumverteilung

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198
Author(s):  
Lars P. Feld
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Fiscal Competition ◽  
Transfer Payments ◽  
Redistribution Policy ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract Fiscal competition is supposed to lead to the collapse of the welfare state because, first, it will become difficult for a single jurisdiction to levy a redistribution tax upon the rich and mobile, and second, such a policy, if undertaken in one jurisdiction, will attract poor individuals from other jurisdictions and erode the internal redistribution policy. In this paper, theoretical and empirical studies concerning the impact of taxes and transfer payments on residence decisions of taxpayers are reviewed. The relationship of fiscal competition and the erosion of the welfare state is illustrated with aggregate data on income redistribution in Switzerland.

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.

The Strange Case of Welfare Chauvinism in Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Marko Grdešić
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Native Population ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
The Welfare State

According to welfare chauvinism, access to the welfare state should be reserved for the native population, whereas immigrants are seen as a drain on resources. The curious aspect of welfare chauvinism in Europe is that it is more prevalent in the East. Why is this the case? This article uses the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Life in Transition Survey (LITS) in order to locate the most robust individual-level determinants of welfare chauvinism for countries of both Eastern and Western Europe. The results suggest that there is no support for the socioeconomic explanation of welfare chauvinism. There is support for the cultural capital explanation of welfare chauvinism, but only for Western Europe. Finally, there is support for the theory that higher levels of trust lessen the likelihood that a person adopts welfare chauvinism. This finding holds for both Eastern and Western Europe.

scholarly journals FINANCE AND WELFARE: THE IMPACT OF TWO WORLD WARS ON DOMESTIC POLICY IN FRANCE

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 625-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANCES M. B. LYNCH
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
First World War ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World ◽  
The Welfare State

Fathers, families, and the state in France, 1914–1945. By Kristen Stromberg Childers. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. 261. ISBN 0-8014-4122-6. £23.95.Origins of the French welfare state: the struggle for social reform in France, 1914–1947. By Paul V. Dutton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 251. ISBN 0-521-81334-4. £49.99.Britain, France, and the financing of the First World War. By Martin Horn. Montreal and Kingston: McGill – Queen's University Press, 2002. Pp. 249. ISBN 0-7735-2293-X. £65.00.The gold standard illusion: France, the Bank of France and the International Gold Standard, 1914–1939. By Kenneth Mouré. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 297. ISBN 0-19-924904-0. £40.00.Workers' participation in post-Liberation France. By Adam Steinhouse. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001. Pp. 245. ISBN 0-7391-0282-6. $70.00 (hb). ISBN 0-7391-0283-4. $24.95 (pbk).In the traditional historiography of twentieth-century France the period after the Second World War is usually contrasted favourably with that after 1918. After 1945, new men with new ideas, born out of the shock of defeat in 1940 and resistance to Nazi occupation, laid the basis for an economic and social democracy. The welfare state was created, women were given full voting rights, and French security, in both economic and territorial respects, was partially guaranteed by integrating West Germany into a new supranational institutional structure in Western Europe. 1945 was to mark the beginning of the ‘30 glorious years’ of peace and prosperity enjoyed by an expanding population in France. In sharp contrast, the years after 1918 are characterized as a period dominated by France's failed attempts to restore its status as a great power. Policies based on making the German taxpayer finance France's restoration are blamed for contributing to the great depression after 1929 and the rise of Hitler. However, as more research is carried out into the social and economic reconstruction of France after both world wars, it is becoming clear that the basis of what was to become the welfare state after 1945 was laid in the aftermath of the First World War. On the other hand, new reforms adopted in 1945 which did not build on interwar policies, such as those designed to give workers a voice in decision-making at the workplace, proved to be short-lived.

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 Social partners and the welfare state: Recalibration, privatization or collectivization of social risks?

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Johnston ◽  
Andreas Kornelakis ◽  
Costanza Rodriguez d’Acri
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
The Welfare State
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