A Research Agenda for Public Attitudes to Welfare (Elgar Research Agendas) 180088740X, 9781800887404

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A Research Agenda for Public Attitudes to Welfare

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Forward-looking and innovative, Elgar Research Agendas are an essential resource for PhD students, scholars and anybody who wants to be at the forefront of research. For a full list of Edward Elgar published titles, including the titles in this series, visit our website at www​.e​-elgar​.com​.

A Research Agenda for Public Attitudes to Welfare Edited by

FEMKE ROOSMA

Assistant Professor of Sociology, Tilburg University, the Netherlands

TIJS LAENEN

Postdoctoral Researcher, KU Leuven, Belgium, and Tilburg University, the Netherlands

Elgar Research Agendas

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Femke Roosma and Tijs Laenen 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023940694 This book is available electronically in the Sociology, Social Policy and Education subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800887411

EE VS P

ISBN 978 1 80088 740 4 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80088 741 1 (eBook)

Contents

List of figuresvii List of tablesix List of contributorsxi 1

Introduction to A Research Agenda for Public Attitudes to Welfare1 Femke Roosma and Tijs Laenen

2

Labour market policy preferences in the context of migration Dominique Oehrli and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen

25

3

From national welfare states to Social Europe: welfare attitudes in the context of European integration Sharon Baute

53

4

New directions in research on public support for universal basic income Marie-Laure Mulayi, Tijs Laenen, Wim Van Lancker and Bart Meuleman

5

Political awareness and the structure of support for the welfare state Jason Jordan

6

Just institutions for those most in need? Quantitative and qualitative bottom-up perspectives on the perceived legitimacy of a social assistance reform: a focus on food aid recipients in Finland Helena Blomberg and Christian Kroll

81

103

121

v

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

7

Varieties of welfare populism: radical right voters between chauvinism and producerism  Thierry Kochuyt, Koen Abts and Femke Roosma

8

Support for the welfare state over the life course: analysing individual attitude change with multiwave panel data Elias Naumann

9

Institutional trajectories of the welfare state: returns from social policy inception to modern public opinion Nate Breznau

141

161

185

10

Context as a part of our cases: the potential of qualitative work in welfare attitudes research Katharina Zimmermann

207

11

Conclusion: welfare attitudes research as a cathedral under permanent construction Tijs Laenen and Femke Roosma

229

Index251

Figures

2.1

Illustration of significant cross-level interactions

37

2.A.1 Migration inflow and country-specific shares of ALMP support

47

2.A.2 Stock of migration and country-specific shares of ALMP support

47

3.1

Support for European solidarity in the event of distinct types of crises

61

3.2

At what level can we deal with each of the following areas most efficiently? 

63

3.A.1 Support for European solidarity by country, in the event of a social crisis

79

3.A.2 Support for European solidarity by country, in the event of a migration crisis

79

3.A.3 Support for European solidarity by country, in the event of an environmental crisis

80

3.A.4 Support for European solidarity by country, in the event of a security crisis

80

4.1

Mean level of support for design dimensions universality and conditionality among the full sample, rightist, centrist and leftist individuals

94

5.1

Predicted support for reducing inequality by income and knowledge level

112

5.2

Predicted probability of increasing support for social spending by income and knowledge level

112 vii

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8.1

Aggregate change of support for the welfare state in Germany, 2014–2021

169

8.2

Individual level change of attitudes (compared with the previous wave)

170

8.3

Social policy attitudes and job loss: pre- and post-treatment differences between treatment and control group

175

8.4

The effect of job loss on attitudes depending on the period

175

9.1

Theoretical trajectories of welfare states and public opinion

191

9.2

Average wage replacement rate and labour force coverage in three social security domains, 19 Global North countries

192

9.3

Support for redistribution and Age of Social Security

195

9.4

Support for the welfare state and Age of Social Security 196

9.5a-b Regressions of public opinion on Age of Social Security 197 9.6

Within-country slopes by Age of Social Security institutions198

10.1

Qualitative research on welfare attitudes in the two-dimensional space of epistemology and ontology211

Tables

2.1

Basic models on the support for shifting efforts from PLMP to ALMP

35

2.A.1 Variables and descriptive statistics

44

2.A.2 Support for public LMP, OLS results

45

2.A.3 Support for shifting efforts from PLMP to ALMP: Role of individual characteristics

48

3.1

Determinants of support for mutual assistance between EU member states in the event of distinct types of crises

66

3.A.1 Descriptive statistics of individual- and country-level variables

75

3.A.2 Sample size and contextual variables by country

77

4.1

Overview of UBI policy design dimensions

86

4.2

Regression for support for a UBI in Belgium on the conditionality and universality dimension for leftist, centrist and rightist

95

4.A.1 Regression for support for a UBI in Belgium on the conditionality and universality dimension for leftist, centrist and rightist

101

5.1

Political awareness and ideological consistency

110

5.2

Income, political knowledge and support for the welfare state (odds ratios)

111

ix

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

6.1

Respondents’ views on the Kela transfer of SA in 2016 and 2018 (%)

130

6.2

Respondents’ views on the consequences of the Kela transfer of SA in 2018 (%)

131

6.3

Respondents’ views on the consequences of the Kela transfer in 2018. Results (in percent) for those who had received basic SA both before and after the Kela transfer

131

7.1

Relative importance of norms on deservingness according to the welfare discourse

153

8.1

Average support for social policies

167

8.2

Changes of the employment situation and characteristics of those who lost their job

172

8.3

Job loss and attitude change: Average treatment effects 174

8.4

Job loss and attitude change: Share of respondents with substantial shifts of support for unemployment benefits between waves

176

8.A.1 Support for three areas of social policies: linear regression181 8.A.2 Job loss and attitude change: Comparison of restricted and unrestricted sample

183

9.A.1 OLS regression results

206

9.A.2 Country case weighted regression results

206

Contributors

Koen Abts (PhD) is Research Manager in the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO) at KU Leuven (Belgium) and responsible for the building of The Social Study – Belgian Online Probability Panel. He is also one of the principal investigators of the Belgian National Election Study. His research interests include resentment, anti-immigrant attitudes, welfare state attitudes and political cynicism, as well as cleavage theory, with a special interest in populism and the populist radical right. Sharon Baute is Assistant Professor of Comparative Social Policy in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz. She received her PhD in Social Sciences from KU Leuven and has been a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow affiliated with the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam. Her research covers topics in social policy, European integration and international solidarity, focusing in particular on public attitudes towards the social dimension of the European Union (EU). Helena Blomberg is Professor of Social Policy and Social Work at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki. Her research interests include issues of poverty, inequality and vulnerabilities, comparative perspectives on welfare attitudes, policy changes and agenda setting in welfare states. Nate Breznau is a principal investigator on three third-party funded projects at the SOCIUM Research Centre for Inequality and Social Policy at the University of Bremen. His research focuses on public opinion, social policy, income inequality, immigration and meta-science. He is an advocate for open science. He has published works in sociology, political science and general science journals that span theory, models and methods. He earned his PhD in sociology from the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Science. Jason Jordan is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Drew University. His research interests surround the comparative political economy of advanced industrial democracies. In particular, his research xi

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focuses on public support for welfare institutions and how it is influenced by factors such as religion and political awareness. His most recent work examines how variations in political awareness and interest influence the connection between economic self-interest, ideological identity and policy preferences. Thierry Kochuyt holds a PhD in the Social Sciences from KU Leuven. As a freelance academic he has lectured in Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Lebanon and the UAE. His research deals with the interface of social/cultural logics and economic/political forces. Christian Kroll is Senior Lecturer in Social Work and Social Policy at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, and Reader in Social Work at Lund University. His research interests include, i.a., the legitimization and legitimacy of welfare state reforms and attitude formation among the public, welfare state clients and professionals in comparative perspective. Tijs Laenen is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Tilburg University and the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO) at KU Leuven. His main research interest and expertise lies in studying popular attitudes towards differently targeted and differently organized welfare state policies. Bart Meuleman is Full Professor at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven. His research focuses on cross-national comparisons of value and attitude patterns, such as ethnic prejudice, egalitarianism and support for the welfare state. Marie-Laure Mulayi is a PhD student at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven. Her research centres around the social legitimacy of a universal basic income (UBI) from a multidimensional perspective. Her thesis will provide an analytical lens through which to understand the mechanisms driving attitudes of different interest groups toward a UBI. Elias Naumann is a postdoctoral researcher at GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and external research fellow at the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research interests are related to political sociology, welfare state preferences and survey methodology. Dominique Oehrli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern. Her research interests focus on comparative social policy and welfare state analysis. Current research projects specifically consider how social policies and social policy changes relate to preferences and attitudes of individuals and how this relationship is shaped by the larger welfare state context as well as by individual norms and characteristics.

CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

Femke Roosma is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at Tilburg University. Her research focuses on (the legitimacy of) social policies and welfare states. She studies multiple dimensions of support for the welfare state, solidarity and deservingness perceptions and (support for) universal basic income (UBI). Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bern. Her research interests concern comparative public policy, and political behaviour and attitudes. Current research projects aim at linking these two areas by considering potential policy feedback effects, mainly in the field of welfare state and energy policy. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Socio-Economic Review, Journal of Social Policy, Political Behavior, Energy Research & Social Science, Nature Climate Change and Environmental Research Letters. Wim Van Lancker is Associate Professor in Social Work and Social Policy affiliated with the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven. His research agenda focuses on the measurement and analysis of social and family policies and how these policies affect outcomes in terms of wellbeing, inequality, employment and poverty. Together with Rense Nieuwenhuis, he is the editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy (2020, Palgrave Macmillan). More information can be found at www​.wimvanlancker​.be. Katharina Zimmermann is Assistant Professor of Economic Sociology at Universität Hamburg, Germany. Her research focuses on welfare state institutions, cultures and legitimacy, as well as on popular attitudes towards welfare states. Her analyses often adopt a cross-country comparative perspective. Furthermore, she specializes in the European dimension of social and employment policies. More recently, she has been working on the interaction between social and environmental policies in different contexts.

1

Introduction to A Research Agenda for Public Attitudes to Welfare

Femke Roosma and Tijs Laenen

Introduction: the relevance of understanding public attitudes to welfare In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit economies worldwide and increased (the risk of) unemployment, while the pressure on health care systems became immense, the social protection system of the welfare state was able to show her purpose once again. Several countries chose to expand their social security – temporarily – to absorb the economic shock of the lockdowns and shield their citizens from poverty and sudden income drops. At the same time health care systems faced ethical dilemmas in distributing their limited capacity, and discussions about priority access to (the government-provided preventive care of) vaccination were the centre of societal and political debates. And just as the pandemic seemed under control, the world was shaken by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, triggering a major energy crisis and skyrocketing inflation, along with a growing labour shortage, and a new influx of refugees in European welfare states. These new, global developments raised, and still raise, substantial questions about welfare redistribution, the scope and quality of our social protection and health care systems, the deservingness of social groups, and the need for and boundaries of solidarity. Understanding how public attitudes on these issues are formed, who carries these attitudes and why, is crucial to assessing the legitimacy of our solidarity systems. Understanding public views on welfare redistribution may have become more relevant than ever before. Still, public attitudes to welfare have been an established part of societal debates for decades. How people evaluate their welfare state and social protection systems, to what extent they support redistribution and whom they consider to be deserving of social support; these societal and political questions have been interwoven with social policymaking (often policy reform and retrenchment) 1

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since time immemorial. Public attitudes to welfare have developed in a context of globalization, increasing economic competition and changes in sovereign policymaking with an integrating European Union (EU); increasing labour market flexibilization, precarious work and the presence of new social risks; the increase of (labour) migrants and growing ethnic diversity; and finally demographic ageing and increasing costs for pensions and health care. Public attitudes to welfare were relevant in the decades of ‘welfare retrenchment’, first after the oil crises in the late 1970s and 1980s (Taylor-Gooby, 2002) and later on during the so-called ‘age of austerity’ following the financial crisis in 2008 (Ólafsson et al., 2019; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2017). But public attitudes to welfare were also relevant in reforming the welfare state when policymakers introduced social investment policies and the so called ‘enabling state’ (Gilbert, 2004), or when benefit conditionality and welfare sanctioning became central elements of welfare policy proposals (Betzelt & Bothfeld, 2011; Rossetti et al., 2022). And public attitudes to welfare were on the agenda when the rise of populist parties introduced proposals for ‘welfare chauvinism’ – excluding migrants from welfare provisions (Greve, 2019). The relevance of studying public support for welfare lies in the assumption that institutions can only function effectively and efficiently if they are considered to be ‘just’ by the general public (Roosma, 2016; Rothstein, 1998). The welfare state is a ‘mega-sized collective action problem’ (Rothstein et al., 2012, p. 8) and can only be maintained if people support welfare institutions and cooperate with the redistribution of means, risks and life chances. Citizens wish to contribute to the common good as long as they believe that this good is being produced and as long as they believe that others contribute as well (Levi, 1991). John Rawls, in Theory of Justice (1971), referred to the legitimacy of institutions when he discussed their stability. He claims that ‘a just system must generate its own support. This means that it must be arranged so as to bring about in its members the corresponding sense of justice, an effective desire to act in accordance with its rules for reasons of justice’ (Rawls, 1971, p.  261). Welfare institutions are legitimate when they are organized in such a way that people want to follow the rules for redistribution because they believe that those rules are just; and if welfare states are seen as just, that is, legitimate, they can function efficiently and effectively. Rothstein (1998) mentions three conditions for welfare state legitimacy, based on Levi’s theory of ‘contingent consent’ (Levi, 1991). First, the condition of substantive justice; people should support the goals and programmes of the welfare state and believe these serve a just cause. Second, there should be a just distribution of burdens; citizens believe that other citizens have a fair share in the costs of the social programmes. Others have pointed to a broader idea of

INTRODUCTION

3

distributive justice as a condition for legitimacy, including the fairness of the allocation of outcomes (Hegtvedt & Johnson, 2000; Tyler, 2011), that is, the question of who should benefit from the collected resources (Roosma, 2016). This refers to broad literature on the perceived deservingness of welfare recipients that delves into this question (Van Oorschot, 2000, 2006). Third, Rothstein (1998) mentions the condition of procedural justice; the implementation of welfare policies must be executed effectively and efficiently and people must perceive the implementation as fair, simple and cheap and perceive cheating or free-riding as difficult (Rothstein, 1998). Roosma (2016) added the condition of just outcomes, referring to the concept of output-legitimacy that evaluates the performances of institutions and whether the social institutions are able to tackle the social problems for which they are designed (Fenger et al., 2011; Scharpf, 1999). In sum, studying public attitudes to welfare is relevant for assessing the social legitimacy of the welfare state, knowing that this welfare state can only function if it is seen as just by the public. Conditions for welfare legitimacy involve support for its goals and programmes, a just distribution of benefits and contributions, an efficient and effective implementation of policies and just outcomes (Roosma, 2016; Rothstein, 1998). Academics have been studying public attitudes to welfare since they are part of the general discourse around policymaking. Studying welfare attitudes in more general terms – by examining support for redistribution – and in more detail – by assessing support for and evaluations of specific policy programmes and the deservingness of different target groups of social policy (the elderly, the sick and disabled, the unemployed and the poor) (Ervasti et al., 2012; Laenen, 2020; Meuleman et al., 2018; Schmidt-Catran, 2016; Svallfors, 2012). The field of studying welfare support has developed especially in recent decades as more and better data has become available, especially from the European Social Survey (wave 4 and 8). Scholars have obtained greater insights into the complexity and multidimensionality of welfare attitudes, but also in its individual and contextual level predictors and dynamics. In addition, theoretical developments have substantiated and inspired new lines of empirical research. These advancements in the field have opened up new pathways to explore; we know more about what is still unknown. In this edited volume we sketch a research agenda of public attitudes towards the welfare state and present nine innovative contributions to the field along six new lines of research that we will define below. In the continuation of this introductory chapter, we first outline the current state of the academic field and scientific literature on welfare attitudes. Then

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we present the six new lines of research on which our research agenda on public attitudes towards welfare is based. Finally, we introduce the different chapters and describe how they incorporate these new research lines in their contributions. At the end of this volume we will draw conclusions and sketch the road ahead.

The current state of research to public attitudes to welfare In drawing a research agenda for public attitudes to welfare, first the foundations of our current knowledge have to be mapped. As argued above, knowledge of public attitudes towards the welfare state has substantially developed in recent decades; the foundations of welfare attitudes research are more solid than ever before. In a recent contribution, Van Oorschot et al. (2022) define several major advancements in the field of welfare attitudes research since the beginning of the millennium. Van Oorschot et al. (2022) mention two main theoretical developments: the multidimensional model of welfare attitudes (Roosma, 2016; Roosma et al., 2013) and the CARIN deservingness model (Van Oorschot et al., 2017). They show that – on account of the availability of new data – major progress has been made in understanding support for different social policies, evaluating the effects of contextual factors and feedback effects between welfare institutions and welfare attitudes, and in developing longitudinal perspectives on welfare attitudes (Van Oorschot et al., 2022). At the same time, they acknowledge that there is also a lot to wish for. Below we discuss the current state of research in the field of welfare attitudes, in which we build on the work of Van Oorschot et al. (2022). In the next section we define which roads, in our view, should be further explored. First, we point at the two recent theoretical advancements mentioned by Van Oorschot et al. (2022). The multidimensional model of welfare attitudes was developed to function as a framework to assess whether social protection systems meet the four conditions for welfare state legitimacy (Roosma, 2016; Roosma et al., 2013; Rothstein, 1998); the conditions of substantive, redistributive and procedural justice and of just outcomes, that were discussed in the previous section. Assessing whether these conditions are met is done by measuring public attitudes towards related welfare dimensions, among which, support for the goals of redistribution and different welfare policies (substantive justice), opinions on who is deserving of welfare support and who should contribute (redistributive justice), perceptions of welfare abuse and underuse, welfare bureaucracy and efficiency (procedural justice) and evaluations of

INTRODUCTION

5

intended and unintended outcomes of welfare state programmes. Because in 2008 and 2016 the European Social Survey held large scale cross-national surveys (in 31 and 23 European countries respectively) asking respondents about their public attitudes to welfare, for the first time, many dimensions of welfare support could be studied in a multidimensional and cross-national perspective. Results showed that people on the one hand strongly believe that the government should redistribute between the rich and the poor and provide benefits and services to the elderly and the sick and disabled (Roosma et al., 2013, 2014a), while at the same time they are very critical about the efficiency and effectiveness of the system (seeing a lot of welfare abuse and underuse for instance (Roosma et al., 2016a)) and they evaluate welfare outcomes more negatively as well (Van Oorschot et al., 2012). Remarkably, despite substantial contextual developments like a financial and economic crisis and a growing influx of migrants and refugees and political developments in Europe, these welfare attitudes seem stable over time (European Commission, 2020; Laenen et al., 2020; Roosma, 2021). More studies are needed, however, to map support for these dimensions of welfare support in greater detail to understand whether all conditions of welfare legitimacy are met. For instance, more fine-grained analyses into how support for dimensions differs within different types of welfare provisions could provide a better understanding of the legitimacy of different parts of the welfare state (Laenen & Roosma, 2021). Second, Van Oorschot et al. (2022) point at the CARIN deservingness model, based on the early work of Van Oorschot (2000, 2006) on the popular welfare deservingness of social target groups, as a recent second theoretical advancement in the field. This theoretical model draws upon the assumption that people apply five criteria to assess whether they believe a person, or social target group, is deserving of social support. These include the criteria of Control – people are not responsible for their need; Attitude – people show gratitude for the support provided; Reciprocity – people did/will do something in return for their support; Identity – we can identify more easily with people in need; Need – people are in real need of support. The higher target groups of welfare ‘score’ on these criteria, the more they are considered deserving of support, while the relative weight of these criteria differs across individuals and contexts (Laenen, 2020; Meuleman et al., 2019; Van Oorschot et al., 2017). In the past decade, scholars of public attitudes to welfare have increasingly used the CARIN deservingness model to assess the deservingness of target groups in different domains and (social policy) contexts. The CARIN deservingness model has become essential in understanding public attitudes to welfare. In addition to these theoretical advancements Van Oorschot et al. (2022) refer to the fact that more insights are obtained about attitudes towards

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specific policy domains, instead of measuring support for the welfare state in general. Especially in social policy domains offering protection against traditional social risks such as pensions, unemployment benefits and health care, public attitudes are well mapped (Blekesaune & Quadagno, 2003; Deeming, 2018; European Commission, 2020; Kohl & Wendt, 2004; Van Oorschot & Meuleman, 2014; Wendt et al., 2010). Support for all of these types of benefits is generally high, however, substantial differences are found between the high support for social protection against old age and sickness, and support for protecting the unemployed which is substantially lower (Roosma et al., 2014a). However, it is also recognized that several domains have been understudied (European Commission, 2020; Van Oorschot et al., 2022); for instance, the domains of social assistance, poor relief schemes, long-term care and invalidity benefits are covered much less in the literature (Baumberg Geiger, 2021; European Commission, 2020; Lehnert et al., 2018). In addition there is some progress in studies that assess specific policy trends or features such as studies into the conditionality of benefits, welfare sanctioning and activation measures (Buss, 2019; Kootstra & Roosma, 2016; Laenen & Meuleman, 2019; Rossetti, Abts, et al., 2020), and studying support for new policy proposals such as support for the Europeanization of social policies (Baute & Meuleman, 2020; Gerhards et al., 2016) and, specifically, the idea of introducing a universal basic income (UBI) (Roosma & Van Oorschot, 2019; Rossetti, Roosma, et al., 2020; Vlandas, 2019). But these studies have only laid the groundwork. A somewhat specific line of research that has drawn much attention and made much progress, focuses on studying welfare chauvinism; ‘the idea that welfare services should be restricted to our own’ (Andersen & Bjørklund, 1990, p. 212). Welfare attitudes research on welfare chauvinism has mainly focused on contextual predictors like migration influx and population diversity (Eger and Breznau, 2017; Mau & Burckhardt, 2009; Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012), but also on institutional factors, referring to the capacity of the welfare state to integrate and create communities (Crepaz & Damron, 2009; Van der Waal et al., 2010), and on socio-economic and social class differences in support for welfare chauvinism, assuming that welfare chauvinism is strongest among people with lower socio-economic status, higher perceived economic risks and lower education (Kros & Coenders, 2019; Mewes & Mau, 2012; Van der Waal et al., 2010). However, also with regard to these types of welfare attitudes, researchers find a great deal of stability in opinions (Eger et al., 2020), which poses new questions about among which groups and under what circumstances different levels of welfare chauvinism occur. Also, individual level predictors of other welfare attitudes have been studied in greater detail and revealed more complexity in why and under what condi-

INTRODUCTION

7

tions people support providing social benefits and services. Traditionally, the main theoretical angle in studying welfare state support focused on explaining whether people support welfare policies because of self-interest or because of ideological convictions, moral commitment or altruism (d’Anjou et al., 1995; Gelissen, 2000; Hasenfeld & Rafferty, 1989; Jæger, 2006; Kangas, 1997; Rossetti, Abts, et al., 2020; Van Oorschot, 2002). In general, it was assumed that people with lower economic statuses (income, education, social class), higher age (in case of pensions) and identifying as female (in case of child care benefits) are more supportive of welfare provisions, as well as people identifying as ideologically left-wing and with stronger feelings of moral commitment and altruism. In more recent studies not only self-interest or ideological preferences of (potential) recipients of welfare provisions are examined, subjective risk perceptions, social and institutional trust, ethnocentrism, perceived welfare performance and perceptions of deservingness of the target groups are relevant in explaining people’s welfare attitudes (Calzada & Del Pino, 2008; Edlund, 2006; Finseraas & Ringdal, 2012; Jæger, 2006; Kumlin, 2007; Laenen, 2020; Sachweh, 2018; Van der Waal et al., 2010). Self-interest and ideological preferences are also more disentangled, where ideological preferences are interpreted as mediating factors between indicators of self-interest and welfare attitudes (Rossetti et al., 2020). As the field develops, more attention is paid to welfare attitudes of specific subgroups in the population, such as users of welfare or specific social classes (Blomberg et al., 2012). Moreover, researchers choose more often a so-called person-centred approach (instead of a variable-centred approach), which analyses welfare opinions of individual respondents with certain combinations of characteristics or investigates how individual respondents combine certain views with regard to different dimensions of the welfare state (Roosma et al., 2014a; Rossetti, 2022). As mentioned above, because more data has become available from large scale cross-national surveys such as the European Social Survey, the International Social Survey Programme and the European Value Study, scholars were able to test the impact of contextual factors like inequality, social spending, unemployment rates, economic development and political context in explaining welfare attitudes (Van Oorschot & Meuleman, 2014; Van Oorschot et al., 2012). In the past decade these studies have abandoned the traditional approach to use Esping-Andersen’s welfare regime types as the main contextual factor to explain differences in welfare attitudes (Van Oorschot et al., 2022). More studies use multiple contextual variables and link these to the different dimensions of public attitudes to welfare (Ervasti, 2012a; Meuleman & Chung, 2012; Roosma et al., 2016a; Van Oorschot et al., 2012). However, with limited contextual cases (countries and survey years) available, and the lack

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of theoretical development in how contextual factors link to individual level welfare preferences and perceptions, there are still many gaps in the literature. Since repeated cross-sectional data became available for a large number of countries, scholars of welfare attitudes were able to study change in welfare attitudes on a larger scale. In an edited volume by Laenen et al. (2020), it was shown that welfare attitudes are remarkably stable over the course of a decade – despite the occurrence of major contextual developments such as the financial and economic crisis, a large influx of migrants and political shifts (see also Roosma, 2021). This is in line with previous single country studies, undertaken from the 1980s onwards, that also show relative stability in public attitudes towards the welfare state in the long run (Goul Andersen, 1999; Svallfors, 2011). This raises new questions such as: why are welfare attitudes generally stable over time? Are there differences between welfare attitudes? What is happing under the surface, do different subgroups change their attitudes? In addition, several studies about welfare attitudes change show that changing contexts can lead to substantial attitude change in the short run (Jeene et al., 2014; Naumann et al., 2016). Citizens can be affected by experiencing, for instance, economic hardship and change their attitudes to welfare accordingly (Margalit, 2013; Naumann et al., 2016). Yet, longitudinal studies into public attitudes to welfare are still in their infancy. Finally, we point at some methodological advancements that generated new insights in public attitudes to welfare. Traditionally, studies of public attitudes to welfare were partly descriptive and variable-centred in the sense that studies focused on explaining support for welfare arrangements (as dependent variable) with independent variables at both the individual and the contextual level. Now we see an increasing number of vignette studies and survey experiments that provide insights in underlying value trade-offs, the volatility of welfare attitudes and what determines opinion change (Gielens et al., 2019; Kootstra & Roosma, 2016; Kuhn & Kamm, 2019; Naumann et al., 2020). Latent cluster analysis can provide insights to how people combine attitudes to different dimensions of the welfare state (Roosma et al., 2014a, 2016b), utilizing a more person-centred approach. Furthermore, there is a growing number of qualitative studies that provide greater insights in underlying reasonings of people about welfare benefits and deservingness of target groups (Rossetti, Roosma, et al., 2020; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019), including some mixed-methods studies (Goerres & Prinzen, 2012a, 2012b; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2017). All in all, we can conclude that in the past decade our knowledge of public attitudes to welfare has really taken off. Driven by the availability of new data, studies have made progress both theoretically and empirically. Yet, as men-

INTRODUCTION

9

tioned, we now also know more about the unknown. Based on the foundations of our current knowledge on welfare attitudes, we sketch new lines of research for studying public attitudes to welfare.

New lines of research for studying public attitudes to welfare We propose the following six new lines of research, divided into three categories, to develop our knowledge on public attitudes to welfare further. In addition, we present two conditions necessary for executing research along these lines. 1

Expand the scope of welfare attitudes research

1a

Expand the scope to more conditions of welfare state legitimacy and identify how people combine different welfare attitudes

As argued in the first section, the welfare state needs to meet several conditions for legitimacy; substantial, redistributive and procedural justice, and just outcomes. We know quite a lot about substantial support for the welfare state; support for redistribution and support for different types of social policies is relatively well mapped. Also, we know more about who people consider to be deserving of benefits, following the work on the CARIN deservingness criteria. However, preferences of who should contribute to the welfare state (redistributive justice) and perceptions about the implementation (procedural justice) are relatively understudied, as well as evaluations of the outcomes of the welfare state (just outcomes). There are a limited amount of studies about abuse and underuse of welfare benefits (Ervasti, 2012b; Roosma et al., 2014b, 2016a) and some studies about welfare state consequences (Van Oorschot & Meuleman, 2012; Van Oorschot et al., 2012), but studies about the perceived efficiency of welfare state bureaucracies, perceptions about the affordability of welfare state provisions (Roosma & Reeskens, 2016) or preferred contributors to welfare redistribution are surely welcomed so as to get a more complete picture of the social legitimacy of the welfare state. Additionally, we suggest to study how people combine attitudes towards these different elements of the welfare state. We know that welfare attitudes are multidimensional, people assess different dimensions of the welfare state differently. However, we know very little about which groups of people combine

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attitudes in different ways; for instance, how do the middle class and working class combine support towards the goal and range of welfare policy with an evaluation of procedural aspects of the welfare state and of the outcomes of the welfare state? Finally, we suggest to study the conditions for social legitimacy of the welfare state, as mentioned above, not only for the welfare state in general, but also within welfare state policies. For instance, how do people assess the goals, spending, redistributional design (who pays in, who receives), efficiency, effectiveness and outcomes of unemployment benefits compared to social assistance benefits, and if there are differences, how can these be explained (Laenen & Roosma, 2021)? 1b

Expand the scope of public attitudes to – understudied, more detailed and new – social policies

Next, we propose to study welfare attitudes towards more and different types of social policies and social policy proposals. As argued in the previous section, public support for some social policy domains is studied in great detail; for instance, support for and the evaluation of old age pensions and unemployment benefits is largely mapped. Other domains of the welfare state however, are less well covered; for instance, we do not know much about support for social assistance, poor relief schemes, invalidity benefits or long-term care arrangements (Baumberg Geiger, 2021; European Commission, 2020), despite the fact that these type of benefits and services are an essential element of our welfare system. More specifically, the novel and specific characteristics of welfare policies, such as conditionality of welfare benefits, activation policies or support for the social investment perspectives (Kootstra & Roosma, 2016; Rossetti, Abts, et al., 2020; Rossetti et al., 2022) have remained understudied. New surveys include these characteristics of social policy more in their questionnaires, but this remains relatively limited given the fact that societal and political debates seem to discuss the legitimacy of these types of policy features to a great extent. Relatedly, studies about support for alternative welfare proposals, like UBI, or European level social benefits are still in their infancy. Recent studies about support for UBI (Chrisp et al., 2020; Laenen et al., 2022; Roosma & Van Oorschot, 2019; Rossetti, Roosma, et al., 2020) or Social Europe (Baute et al., 2018, 2019) are offering interesting insights, but these studies come with some challenges; the proposed policies are new and sometimes unknown and it is

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hard to predict their effects on relevant outcomes (such as reducing inequality or poverty). New lines of research lie in examining preferences for social policy proposals in more refined ways. What would be especially interesting would be asking respondents if they prefer these new policies over the existing ones (see Rincón García, 2021; Rincón Garcia et al., 2022). 2

Expand the explanatory factors in welfare attitudes research

2a

Explore attitudes to welfare of different subgroups of the population – with special interests in the welfare state

We already know quite a bit about public attitudes of welfare from the general public, as previous studies have studied individual factors of (mainly) self-interest and ideological affiliation as explanations of public attitudes to welfare (see previous section). But previous studies have not focused a great deal on welfare attitudes of specific subgroups in society. We distinguish two types of subgroups. First, new studies can delve into subgroups of the general population with specific combinations of socio-economic backgrounds and ideological or political interests. How do well-known explanatory factors of welfare attitudes intersect? Knowing more about welfare support among what is called ‘welfare populists’ or the middle class with certain ideological profiles, is also interesting from a political perspective (Greve, 2019; Mau, 2015). Second, although some scholars already have done work in this field (mostly in single country studies) (Blomberg et al., 2012, 2017; De Wilde, 2017), we argue to further explore welfare attitudes among groups with specific interests in the welfare state, that is, stakeholders, such as politicians, administrators, social workers, pressure groups, benefit recipients or other groups that provide welfare and social provisions, including entrepreneurs, civil society and/or the family that offer informal care and support. We argue that groups with special interests in welfare might not only be better informed about welfare policies and/or have stronger opinions about these policies, but also either have more ability to change welfare policies, or are more affected by these policies. 2b

Expand our (theoretical) knowledge of contextual level factors

In addition to individual level factors, contextual factors can change people’s perspectives on the welfare state. Current insights in contextual level predictors are mostly obtained from cross-national datasets. These types of studies are hampered by the fact that the number of units of analysis are limited to

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about 20 to 30 country contexts. Studying the impact of institutional, economic or cultural factors, including control variables is therefore limited. Examining contextual predictors of public attitudes to welfare from a longitudinal perspective might offer possibilities to enhance our knowledge about the effects of, for instance, economic developments and social policies on change in welfare attitudes. Also, a regional perspective (instead of a national one) could provide some more comparative power (Eger & Breznau, 2017). The lack of empirical power seems to also have obstructed the development of theory and theoretical mechanisms, explaining the relationship between contexts and public attitudes to welfare. It is therefore not surprising that examining the impact of contexts on specific subgroups, as mentioned in research line 2a, within the population is a field largely untouched. The development of case studies might give more insights into the mechanisms at play here. 3

Expand the dynamic perspective on public attitudes to welfare

3a

Change of public attitudes to welfare

The third new line of research of change in welfare attitudes focuses on dynamic perspectives of welfare attitudes. Previous studies have shown that public attitudes to welfare are very stable over time (Laenen et al., 2020; Roosma, 2021; Svallfors, 2011). Over the course of years or decades, many public attitudes to welfare hardly seem to change. But we know relatively little about why welfare attitudes remain so stable over time and about what is going on underneath the surface of stable support. Does stability at the macro level reflect stability at the individual level as well? Or do subgroups within the population change opinion, for instance, and how can we understand this change? Does this differ for different types of welfare attitudes? And how do life-course events or contextual changes influence public attitudes to welfare? Only a few studies on specific welfare state topics are currently available (see Jeene et al., 2014; Naumann et al., 2016). Using real panel data that traces the welfare attitudes of individuals during their life course would largely advance the dynamic perspective on welfare attitudes. 3b

Assess the volatility in public attitudes to welfare

An important critical note on welfare attitudes research is that people might not have well-developed attitudes towards complex issues such as welfare

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policies (Converse, 1964; Goerres & Prinzen, 2012a; Kinder, 2006). Moreover, people are continuously influenced by arguments and information or may be misinformed about welfare issues (Kuklinski et al., 2000). Providing information, arguments and cues can let people change their opinions (Druckman et al., 2010). We know that attitude change in the short run can be rather volatile; if people are confronted with frames, information or (counter)arguments they are relatively likely to change their opinion about a complex topic like the welfare state (Jordan et al., 2022; Kootstra & Roosma, 2016) or remain untouched by the presentation of (scientific) information (Rincón García, 2021). The role of (prior) knowledge, information, arguments and frames should be studied in greater detail to understand the mechanisms of change in public attitudes to welfare. 4

Two conditions for exploring new lines of research about public attitudes to welfare

Finally, we mention two important conditions for the field to advance further. First, it is rather obvious that the availability of high quality – preferably cross-national and/or longitudinal – data is essential to be able to fill the gaps and explore the pathways mentioned above. Although major advancements have been realized, there is still a lot to wish for. Especially individual panel data and comparative qualitative data, which is lacking, but also more fine-grained questions about understudied dimensions of the welfare state would help the field further. Second, we can obtain better insights in the social legitimacy of the welfare state – both in the ‘old’ and in ‘new’ lines of research – when we utilize underexplored methodological approaches such as vignette studies, survey experiments, latent cluster analysis and qualitative data designs. Applying ‘new’ or underused methodological techniques has already, and importantly, contributed to our understanding of welfare attitudes as mentioned in the previous section. Pioneering qualitative studies have provided greater insights into the underlying reasonings of people about welfare benefits and deservingness of target groups (Laenen et al., 2019; Rossetti, Roosma, et al., 2020; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2017). In addition, vignette studies, conjoint and survey experiments have been a great advancement in the field, providing many of the abovementioned insights (Gielens et al., 2019; Kootstra, 2016; Kuhn & Kamm, 2019; Naumann et al., 2020). Finally, mixed methods approaches can have many advantages, as they combine insights in public attitudes of the general population or relevant subgroups of the population, with insights in underlying reasonings (Goerres & Prinzen, 2012a, 2012b; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2017). However, these abovementioned studies only discovered a tip of the iceberg.

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More diverse empirical strategies are necessary to obtain a full perspective of the complex and multidimensional attitudes that welfare opinions have turned out to be.

A research agenda in effect: a preview of the chapters The different chapters in this volume all contribute to one or more of the new lines of research we sketched above. They explore new dependent variables of understudied (trade-off between active and passive labour market policy preferences and attitudes towards welfare implementation) and new welfare policy proposals (Social Europe and UBI) in new contexts (Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6); new explanatory factors, including the role of political knowledge (Chapter 5) and looking at new subgroups (the food-aid recipients and radical right constituencies) (Chapters 6 and 7); as well as new contextual factors (institutional trajectories) (Chapter 9) and dynamics in public attitudes looking at welfare attitude change of the life-course (Chapter 8). And they apply underused (mixed) methods (Chapters 4, 6 and 7) and new methodological perspectives (Chapter 10) to arrive at new insights. All chapters end with further suggestions to explore public attitudes to welfare. We give a brief overview of the new roads that they explore. We start with three chapters that focus mostly on expanding our knowledge about new and understudied dependent variables in welfare attitudes research (contributing to research line 1b), studied in new contexts (contributing to research line 2b). Chapter 2 by Dominique Oehrli and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen delves into the underexplored topic of attitudes towards active labour market policies and their trade-off with passive labour market policies (unemployment benefits), linking this to the contextual factor of migration. They theorize that migration flows prompt changes in public notions about how labour market policies should cope with the concurrent risks and suggest that immigration promotes preferences for shifting public efforts from passive to active labour market policies. In Chapter 3 Sharon Baute studies public attitudes to welfare in the context of European integration and the development of a Social Europe. She examines support for mutual assistance between EU member states in the event of a social crisis, or in other words, support for European social risk-sharing that can protect the social welfare of European citizens. She contrasts this support for European solidarity in the event of social crises with support for European solidarity in the event of migration, environmental and security crises and analyses the role of various individual and contextual factors. Chapter 4, by Marie-Laure Mulayi,

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Tijs Laenen, Wim Van Lancker and Bart Meuleman, explores new directions in research on public support for UBI. UBI is a far-reaching policy proposal as it could replace (large) parts of our current social protection systems. This chapter provides an overview of the state of knowledge of existing research on public support for UBI, reflects on the developments that have occurred within this rapidly emerging area of research and delves into the methodological added value of using a vignette experiment in investigating the role of different policy design dimensions in public support for UBI. The next three chapters lay their focus on expanding our knowledge of the role of explanatory factors influencing public attitudes to welfare. They contribute mainly to research line 2a, focusing on welfare attitudes among specific subgroups in the population, but also to line 1a, focusing on the implementation dimension of welfare legitimacy, and to line 3b, focusing on the role of knowledge influencing welfare attitudes. To start with the latter, in Chapter 5 Jason Jordan observes that for large sections of the public with limited political interest and awareness, policy preferences are frequently inconsistent and disconnected from economic self-interest or broader normative values. This suggests that large percentages of voters struggle to correctly identify the relative positions of parties on social policy issues, limiting their capacity to reward or punish parties for their stances on these issues. Chapter 5 suggests a new research agenda centred on how variations in political interest and awareness both within and potentially across countries may shape public opinion on the welfare state. In Chapter 6 Helena Blomberg and Christian Kroll study attitudes of food aid recipients – an understudied group in welfare attitudes research – towards a policy reform transferring the implementation of social assistance benefits from municipalities to the national social security agency – shedding light on the understudied implementation dimension of welfare state legitimacy (as mentioned in research line 1a). Combining qualitative and quantitative data in a mixed-methods approach, this chapter compares and delves into experiences of the possible shortcomings of this social security system. In Chapter 7, Thierry Kochuyt, Koen Abts and Femke Roosma focus on the specific subgroup of the radical right voters and reconstructs why they oppose immigrants’ access to the welfare state. Using in-depth interviews they aim to demonstrate that the concept ‘welfare chauvinism’ fails to capture the element of producerist logic that parts of this subgroup display. With this approach they aim to demonstrate that the concepts captured in welfare attitudes survey research don’t often fully capture the meaning given to these concepts by (parts of) the public; implicating that (some) welfare attitudes are still not well understood.

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We move to understanding the role of context and longitudinal change better in the three following chapters. These chapters contribute to the research lines 2b, expanding our knowledge of the role of context, and 3a, examining the role of change. In Chapter 8, Elias Naumann analyses welfare attitudes change with individual level panel data. He summarizes the main theoretical approaches to explaining welfare attitudes at the individual level. By applying an example, focusing on the effect of job loss on welfare attitudes, he shows the advantages of (multiwave) panel data and provides empirical guidance on how to analyse such data, while also discussing potential pitfalls. The chapter addresses the potential of studying the impact of other life-course events like marriage, having children or retiring for the future agenda of welfare state attitudes research. In Chapter 9 Nate Breznau unravels why public attitudes to welfare are so stable over time and what is the role of an institutional logic to welfare state attitudes. He tests the proposition that political and policy-defining events early in nation state trajectories create norms and preferences that are steady over long periods of time, using the data about the timing of basic welfare state laws and comprehensive social insurance laws (between 1884 and 1970). He aims to identify whether earlier and faster trajectories to social insurance predict greater welfare support. Finally, in Chapter 10, Katharina Zimmermann proposes methodological advancements in the field, with a specific focus on understanding the role of context. She discusses existing approaches of qualitative welfare attitudes research and links between qualitative and qualitative work in welfare attitudes research. Zimmermann argues that the concept of ‘context’, as an integral part of the cases we study, can potentially bridge the epistemologies of qualitative and quantitative research on welfare attitudes and open new routes for qualitative and mixed-method welfare attitudes research. The chapter utilizes data from qualitative group discussions in Germany to illustrate its argument. In Chapter 11 we pick up the various threads and draw conclusions about the research agenda for public attitudes to welfare. We draw an analogy with the cathedral La Sagrada Familia, which is under permanent construction. As the chapters in this volume show, studying public attitudes to welfare is unfinished and will remain so, as long as the welfare state develops and changes. The different construction methods that are used in constructing the cathedral can be recognized in the diversity of methodologies that are applied to understand welfare attitudes. Moreover, ‘architects’ from different social science disciplines have shed their light on welfare attitudes research, which shows the different styles of the ‘pillars’ of the research agenda. Finally, funding is a main driver of the construction work; the more funding for data collection the more prosperous the advancements in the field. The conclusion ends with ‘an eye

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on the future’ by drawing lessons and implications for the next generation of welfare attitudes research. Understanding people’s attitudes towards such a complex and multifaceted system as our social protection system, and how people compose and combine these opinions, is essential for academics and policymakers to understand the effective and efficient functioning of our welfare institutions. Research along the abovementioned new lines of research would help to enhance our insights into the legitimacy and possible pitfalls of our welfare system; a work that remains under permanent construction, executed with different methods and by different architects. The chapters in this volume build further on this cathedral of existing welfare attitudes research, while at the same time looking at the unfinished pillars that are reaching to the sky.

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Mewes, J. & Mau, S. (2012). Unraveling working-class welfare chauvinism. In S. Svallfors (Ed.), Contested welfare states: Welfare attitudes in Europe and beyond (pp. 119–157). Stanford University Press. Naumann, E., Buss, C., & Bahr, J. (2016). How unemployment experience affects support for the welfare state: A real panel approach. European Sociological Review, 32(1), 81–92. Naumann, E., De Tavernier, W., Naegele, L., & Hess, M. (2020). Public support for sanctioning older unemployed – a survey experiment in 21 European countries. European Societies, 22(1), 77–100. Ólafsson, S., Daly, M., Kangas, O., & Palme, J. (2019). Welfare and the Great Recession: A comparative study. Oxford University Press. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Harvard University Press. Reeskens, T. & Van Oorschot, W. (2012). Disentangling the ‘new liberal dilemma’: On the relation between general welfare redistribution preferences and welfare chauvinism. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 53(2), 120–39. Rincón García, L. (2021). The paradox of universality: Preferences for universal basic income in Finland and Spain [PhD thesis]. Universitat de Barcelona. Rincón Garcia, L., Vlandas, T., & Hiilamo, H. (2022). What’s not to like? Benefit design, funding structure and support for universal basic income. Journal of European Social Policy, 32(4), 467–483. Roosma, F. (2016). A multidimensional perspective on the social legitimacy of welfare states in Europe [PhD thesis]. Tilburg University. Roosma, F. (2021). The social legitimacy of European welfare states after the age of austerity. In B. Greve (Ed.), Handbook on austerity, populism and the welfare state (pp. 110–129). Edward Elgar Publishing. Roosma, F., & Reeskens, T. (2016). Welfare retrenchment as self-fulfilling prophecy? Sources and consequences of opinions towards the perceived affordability of the welfare state. ESPAnet Annual Conference, Rotterdam. Roosma, F., & Van Oorschot, W. (2019). Public opinion on basic income: Mapping European support for a radical alternative for welfare provision. Journal of European Social Policy, 30(2), 190–205. Roosma, F., Gelissen, J., & Van Oorschot, W. (2013). The multidimensionality of welfare state attitudes: A European cross-national study. Social Indicators Research, 113(1), 235–255. Roosma, F., Van Oorschot, W., & Gelissen, J. (2014a). The preferred role and perceived performance of the welfare state: European welfare attitudes from a multidimensional perspective. Social Science Research, 44, 200–210. Roosma, F., Van Oorschot, W., & Gelissen, J. (2014b). The weakest link in welfare state legitimacy: European perceptions of moral and administrative failure in the targeting of social benefits. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 55(6), 489–508. Roosma, F., Van Oorschot, W., & Gelissen, J. (2016a). The Achilles’ heel of welfare state legitimacy: Perceptions of overuse and underuse of social benefits in Europe. Journal of European Public Policy, 23(2), 177–196. Roosma, F., Van Oorschot, W., & Gelissen, J. (2016b). A just distribution of tax burdens? Attitudes towards the social distribution of taxes in 26 welfare states. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 28(3), 376–400. Rossetti, F. (2022). Citizens’ views on (un)conditionality in the activating welfare state: What determines public attitudes towards work obligations attached to social rights? [PhD thesis]. KU Leuven.

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Rossetti, F., Abts, K., Meuleman, B., & Swyngedouw, M. (2020). ‘First the grub, then the morals’? Disentangling the self-interest and ideological drivers of attitudes towards demanding activation policies in Belgium. Journal of Social Policy, 50(2), 346–366. Rossetti, F., Meuleman, B., & Baute, S. (2022). Explaining public support for demanding activation of the unemployed: The role of subjective risk perceptions and stereotypes about the unemployed. Journal of European Social Policy, https://​doi​.org/​10​ .1177/​09589287221106980 Rossetti, F., Roosma, F., Laenen, T., & Abts, K. (2020). An unconditional basic income? How Dutch citizens justify their opinions about a basic income and work conditionality. Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 36(3), 284–300. Rothstein, B. (1998). Just institutions matter: The moral and political logic of the universal welfare state. Cambridge University Press. Rothstein, B., Samanni, M., & Teorell, J. (2012). Explaining the welfare state: Power resources vs. the quality of government. European Political Science Review, 4(1), 1–28. Sachweh, P. (2018). Conditional solidarity: Social class, experiences of the economic crisis, and welfare attitudes in Europe. Social Indicators Research, 139(1), 47–76. Scharpf, F. W. (1999). Governing in Europe: Effective and democratic? Oxford University Press. Schmidt-Catran, A. W. (2016). Economic inequality and public demand for redistribution: Combining cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence. Socio-Economic Review, 14(1), 119–140. Svallfors, S. (2011). A bedrock of support? Trends in welfare state attitudes in Sweden, 1981–2010. Social Policy & Administration, 45(7), 806–825. Svallfors, S. (2012). Contested welfare states: Welfare attitudes in Europe and beyond. Stanford University Press. Taylor-Gooby, P. (2002). The silver age of the welfare state: Perspectives on resilience. Journal of Social Policy, 31(4), 597–621. Taylor-Gooby, P., Hvinden, B., Mau, S., Leruth, B., Schoyen, M. A., & Gyory, A. (2019). Moral economies of the welfare state: A qualitative comparative study. Acta Sociologica, 62(2), 119–134. Taylor-Gooby, P., Leruth, B., & Chung, H. (2017). After austerity: Welfare state transformation in Europe after the great recession. Oxford University Press. Tyler, T. R. (2011). Justice theory. In P. A. M. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & H. E. Tory (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 344–362). Sage Publications Ltd. Van der Waal, J., Achterberg, P., Houtman, D., De Koster, W., & Manevska, K. (2010). ‘Some are more equal than others’: Economic egalitarianism and welfare chauvinism in the Netherlands. Journal of European Social Policy, 20(4), 350–363. Van Oorschot, W. (2000). Who should get what, and why? On deservingness criteria and the conditionality of solidarity among the public. Policy & Politics, 28(1), 33–48. Van Oorschot, W. (2002). Individual motives for contributing to welfare benefits in the Netherlands. Policy & Politics, 30(1), 31–46. Van Oorschot, W. (2006). Making the difference in Social Europe: Deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states. Journal of European Social Policy, 16(1), 23–42. Van Oorschot, W., & Meuleman, B. (2012). Welfare performance and welfare support. In S. Svallfors (Ed.), Contested welfare states: Welfare attitudes in Europe and beyond (pp. 25–57). Stanford University Press.

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Van Oorschot, W., & Meuleman, B. (2014). Popular deservingness of the unemployed in the context of welfare state policies, economic conditions and cultural climate. In S. Kumlin & I. Stadelmann-Steffen (Eds.), How welfare states shape the democratic public: Policy feedback, participation, voting, and attitudes (pp. 244–268). Edward Elgar Publishing. Van Oorschot, W., Laenen, T., Roosma, F., & Meuleman, B. (2022). Recent advances in understanding welfare attitudes in Europe. In K. Nelson, R. Nieuwenhuis, & M. Yerkes (Eds.), Social policy in changing European societies: Research agendas for the 21st century (pp. 202–217). Edward Elgar Publishing. Van Oorschot, W., Reeskens, T., & Meuleman, B. (2012). Popular perceptions of welfare state consequences: A multilevel, cross-national analysis of 25 European countries. Journal of European Social Policy, 22(2), 181–197. Van Oorschot, W., Roosma, F., Meuleman, B., & Reeskens, T. (2017). The social legitimacy of targeted welfare: Attitudes on welfare deservingness. Edward Elgar Publishing. Vlandas, T. (2019). The politics of the basic income guarantee: Analysing individual support in Europe. Basic Income Studies, 14(1). Wendt, C., Kohl, J., Mischke, M., & Pfeifer, M. (2010). How do Europeans perceive their healthcare system? Patterns of satisfaction and preference for state involvement in the field of healthcare. European Sociological Review, 26(2), 177–192.

2

Labour market policy preferences in the context of migration

Dominique Oehrli and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen

Introduction Over the course of the last few decades, many European countries have experienced an increased inflow of immigrants. These developments have given rise to a growing body of research addressing potential impacts of migration on the way welfare states are run and legitimized through public support (see Eger et al., 2020; Ervasti & Hjerm, 2012; Greve, 2019; Kootstra, 2016; Larsen et al., 2018; Mewes & Mau, 2012; Naumann & Stoetzer, 2018; Reeskens & Van der Meer, 2019). A prominent argument within this literature posits that immigration undermines public support for social policies. According to many scholars, the main reason for this is that increasing ethnic heterogeneity associated with immigration diminishes the sense of community, reduces solidarity and erodes support for redistribution through social policies (see Alesina & Glaeser, 2004; Eger, 2010; Eger & Breznau, 2017; Greve, 2019). Moreover, and relatedly, recent decades have shown that strong migration inflows are a driver of welfare chauvinistic views, that is, the tendency to support more “exclusive” welfare state policies which treat nationals and non-nationals differently (De Koster et al., 2013; Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012; Van der Waal et al., 2010). Welfare chauvinistic views relate to the perception that immigrants more often and “undeservingly” rely on welfare state benefits to the disadvantage of nationals (Gorodzeisky & Semyonov, 2017). Thus, reduced support for social policies may be driven by an increased perception that redistribution specifically benefits immigrants while creating fiscal burdens for nationals. While current research has repeatedly evinced the salience of hypotheses postulating a reduction in public social policy support associated with immigration, some scholars have also pointed out that by generating more competition for jobs and economic resources, and the concomitant enhanced exposure to financial risks, immigration may increase rather than decrease public support for social policies (see Ervasti & Hjerm, 2012). 25

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

This inconclusiveness in the findings shows that social policy preferences in the context of migration are complex and should be more appropriately viewed as a continuum that ranges from unconditional inclusion to total exclusion (Heizmann et al., 2018; Mewes & Mau, 2012; Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012). Indeed, the nexus between public social policy support and immigration depends on a wide range of other factors. Naumann and Stoetzer (2018), for example, show that migration does not affect all individuals within a society in the same way. Rather, attitudes to the welfare state differ between individuals within the same society when faced with immigration (Naumann & Stoetzer, 2018). Moreover, and importantly, the effects of immigration on welfare attitudes may also vary contingent on the specific social policy considered (see Busemeyer & Neimanns, 2017) as well as on its functioning and design (see Häusermann et al., 2018). That is, a strong migration context may not merely enhance or reduce public support for social policies in general, but rather prompt changes in notions about how specific social policies should cope with the concurrent risks. Taking up these discussions, we discuss and test whether and how far immigration promotes preferences for shifting public efforts from passive to active labour market policies (LMP). Thus, our focus lies on a policy field that comprises a wide range of different measures commonly classified into two major categories: passive labour market policies (PLMP) and active labour market policies (ALMP). While both types of policies intend to influence the interaction between labour supply and demand, they do so in a very different way and through different mechanisms. The main goal of PLMP is to provide income replacement for the unemployed, mainly by means of unemployment insurances and/or unemployment assistance programmes. ALMP, on the other hand, includes a range of different labour market integration measures aimed at improving the beneficiaries’ prospect of finding gainful employment, that is, their employability. Examples of ALMP include public employment services, training programmes or subsidized job creation measures. When testing the role of immigration for public preferences towards shifting efforts from passive to active LMP, we also consider that individual level characteristics may moderate this relationship. Moreover, we discuss and test whether we observe varying patterns of migration stocks (i.e. the size of the foreign-born population) and the immigration flow (i.e. the arrival of foreigners into the country). This differentiation is relevant, for example, so as to understand attitudes towards different groups of immigrants (Margalit & Solodoch, 2020).

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The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. First, we discuss the theoretical background of our analyses and provide hypotheses about how migration may affect individual preferences towards shifting public efforts from passive to active LMP. Secondly, we describe our methodological approach. The empirical results are then presented and discussed. The chapter concludes with a summary of the most important findings and an outlook on possibilities to improve further research.

Labour market policy preferences in the context of migration Extensive literature has investigated what determines individual preferences for specific welfare state programmes. At the individual level, two main hypotheses have been identified proposing different mechanisms on how individual attitudes towards state activities are created. The first perspective, based on rational choice theory, suggests that individual policy preferences are mainly shaped by self-interest, whereas the second describes the important role of norms and justice beliefs (Fong, 2001; Jæger, 2006; Kangas, 1997; Kumlin, 2004; Linos & West, 2003; Owens & Pedulla, 2014; Svallfors, 2012). Moreover, a third perspective emphasizes that beside these individual level mechanisms, the structural and policy context is able to affect individual attitudes regarding the state’s role in providing “institutionalised solidarity” (Gelissen, 2000) and concerning the design of policies more specifically. More recently, the question of whether and how these mechanisms are affected by increased migration has received growing scholarly attention. It has been argued that, in an “Age of Migration” (Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012), we face changing conceptions of solidarity (Mewes & Mau, 2012) as well as changing perceptions of one’s own risk exposure. Both factors may severely influence popular support for welfare state policies and the conditions thereof. In the following, we formulate expectations about how immigration affects and moderates’ citizens’ preferences for shifting public efforts from passive to active unemployment policies. We thereby depart from the findings of Fossati (2018) who argues that ALMP are “different” from conventional, more passive unemployment policies with respect to how individuals form their opinions on them. This infers from the fact that ALMP understand unemployment support as an entitlement that needs to be “earned” rather than a social right being universally granted (Bonoli, 2013; Bonoli & Natali, 2012; Fossati, 2018). This is in accordance with the notion of deservingness that has prominently been

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

discussed with respect to support for social benefits (Petersen et al., 2011; Van Oorschot, 2000; Van Oorschot et al., 2017). From this perspective, whenever individuals form an opinion about a social policy, a “deservingness heuristic” (Petersen et al., 2011) is activated, that is, individuals spontaneously evaluate who they think deserves a specific benefit or service. Several criteria have been identified determining whether a welfare claimant is deemed deserving or not (Kootstra, 2016; Van Oorschot, 2000, Van Oorschot et al., 2017): their level of need, their control over their neediness, their identity, that is, their “pleasantness”, the claimants’ attitude towards support, that is, their compliance and gratefulness, and the level of reciprocity or whether support has been “earned”. While unemployed people are generally perceived to score low on almost all these criteria compared to, for example, elderly or disabled people, an additional migration status often implies an even lower scoring on the criteria of reciprocity, identity and attitudes (Kootstra, 2016; Laenen, 2020; Reeskens & Van der Meer, 2019; Van Oorschot & Meuleman, 2014). Against this background, and in view of the over-average levels of immigrant unemployment in most European countries (Gorodzeisky & Semyonov, 2017), at a general level, it can be assumed that citizens are increasingly sceptic about passive unemployment benefits. Active benefits, however, may appear as appropriate and effective measures to remedy the tight labour market situation. Furthermore, active benefits could be more in accordance with the idea that the unemployed (immigrants) need to “do something” in order to receive benefits. More precisely, ALMP may increase the perceived deservingness of unemployed people by increasing their “scores” on the criteria of reciprocity and control (Laenen, 2020; Soss & Schram, 2007). Thus, we conclude that individuals will most likely support shifting effort from PLMP to ALMP if they live in a country exhibiting strong immigration:1 H1: Individual preferences for shifting public efforts from passive to active labour market policies are more pronounced in contexts of strong immigration. This general assumption needs to be qualified against the fact that the migration context does not affect all individuals in a similar and quasi-automatic way but that individual attitudes and perceptions moderate the interrelationship between migration and welfare state preferences. In other words, migration could influence the role of self-interest and of normative and justice beliefs previously discussed. According to the self-interest mechanisms, simply speaking, individuals prefer the policy from which they profit most (Kumlin, 2007), while rejecting policies on which they spend more than they gain (Busemeyer & Neimanns,

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2017). Regarding the unemployment policy, this view particularly suggests that individual vulnerability, that is, the (perceived) probability to become unemployed, influences support for unemployment measures. More precisely, individuals who are unemployed or fear that they could lose their job will more strongly support LMP than those who do not feel the risk of unemployment. Notably, (likely) unemployed people may particularly seek economic security and therefore strongly oppose the idea of cutting public PLMP efforts as PLMP protects this group against the (increased) income risk associated with unemployment (Naumann et al., 2016). This might be even more the case in the context of increased immigration and the associated perception that migrants are a potential threat to one’s own labour market position (Naumann & Stoetzer, 2018). It is therefore reasonable to expect that increased migration generally strengthens the link between labour market vulnerability and support for passive unemployment benefits. However, concerning potential preferences for active instead of passive labour market policies, the situation becomes slightly more complicated. On the one hand, given their strong preference for PLMP, (likely) unemployed people should rather oppose the idea of shifting public efforts from passive to active LMP (see Rossetti et al., 2020). Yet, it is not clear whether passive labour market policies are actually perceived as the only and “most beneficial” policy by the (likely) unemployed in the wake of increasing migration inflows. This infers from the fact that active instruments can provide the group of (likely) unemployed with additional resources and improve their opportunities and competitive ability in the labour market. Moreover, active labour market policies might be less stigmatizing and, thus, be the preferred option of the (likely) unemployed to counter the tight labour market situation. Thus, a strong migration inflow may weaken the link between labour market vulnerability and dissents towards shifting efforts from passive to active policies. H2: A strong migration context weakens the link between labour market vulnerability and the rejection of shifting public efforts from passive to active labour market policies. The second mechanism suggests that popular support for welfare state policies (also) depends on norms and justice beliefs. Van Oorschot (2000), for example, documents that whether the unemployed are perceived as deserving does, inter alia, depend on whether individuals think that unemployed people are lazy and do not show much effort to find a job. Among individuals holding such views, support for passive unemployment benefits might be generally low. Against the fact that immigrants “are consistently deemed the least deserving” (Kootstra, 2016) among European countries, it can be assumed that increased migration inflows may even strengthen the rejection of passive

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

unemployment benefits among individuals with negative perceptions of the unemployed. Subsequently, it can also be argued that those individuals may be particularly supportive of shifting public efforts from PLMP to ALMP, since these instruments will (at least) force the unemployed to “do something” for receiving support (Rossetti et al., 2020). Again, the low position of migrants in the ranking of deservingness indicates that this link may be particularly strong in the context of high migration inflows. H3: A strong migration context strengthens the link between negative perceptions of the unemployed and preferences for shifting public efforts from passive to active unemployment benefits. Finally, the nexus between migration and the welfare state has most often been discussed with respect to the concept of welfare chauvinism, a phenomenon which refers to citizens’ growing tendency to support more “exclusive” welfare state policies which treat nationals and non-nationals differently (De Koster et al., 2013; Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012; Van der Waal et al., 2010). Welfare chauvinism has been demonstrated to be significant across Europe (Greve, 2019; Mewes & Mau, 2012; Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012; Van der Waal et al., 2010). Quite obviously, and as recent decades have demonstrated, strong migration inflows are a driver of welfare chauvinistic views. Thus, in such a context, especially those who bear welfare chauvinistic views will be reluctant to support passive unemployment benefits. By contrast, and in line with our central assumption, we assume that ALMP could be a “way out”, that is, a policy that is more acceptable to individuals with welfare chauvinistic attitudes. We therefore expect: H4: A strong migration context is related to preferences for shifting public efforts from passive to active labour market policies among individuals with welfare chauvinistic attitudes.

Data and methods To test the explanatory power of the migration context in explaining individual preferences towards shifting public efforts from PLMP to ALMP, this chapter applies a quantitative multilevel approach. More precisely, we acquire empirical assessment by fitting different multilevel logistic regression models, which enable us to analyse various determinants at the micro-level (individuals) and the macro-level (countries) simultaneously and to interact factors between those levels.

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We use data from the European Social Survey (ESS) carried out in 2016 (Round 8) across 23 countries. The ESS questionnaire generally consists of a “core module” (which is largely the same in each round) and one or more “rotating modules” dedicated to specific themes.2 In 2016 (Round 8), the “rotating modules” focused, inter alia, on welfare attitudes. Our main dependent variable measures individual preferences for shifting public efforts from passive to active labour market policies. The measurement is based on a question where respondents had to indicate whether they were (strongly) in favour of the government spending more on education and training programmes for the unemployed at the cost of reducing unemployment benefits or (strongly) against such a shift.3 We operationalized our main dependent variable as a dummy that takes the value one if an individual is (strongly) in favour of and zero if an individual is (strongly) against such a shift. To test our assumptions on how the immigration context might influence individual labour market policy preferences, we add two variables measuring different dimensions of the migration context in the year proceeding the survey, that is, 2015. The first variable measures the country-specific inflow of migrants, that is, entries of foreign nationals as a percentage of the total population. The second variable measures the share of foreign-born as a percentage of the total population in the respective countries. As discussed previously, it seems reasonable to assume that the role of immigration for the public’s LMP preferences varies depending on whether we look at the migration inflows or the stock of migrants in a country. Margalit and Solodoch (2020) present different theoretical reasons in this regard which lead to opposing conclusions. On the one hand, given that the immigration inflow represents a mere fraction of the migrant stock and typically a rather small number of people, natives might be much more apprehensive of the migration stock (Margalit & Solodoch, 2020). Consequently, preferences to shift public efforts to ALMP might be primarily triggered by high stocks of migrants. On the other hand, however, as immigrants become more socially and economically integrated with an increasing length of stay, the “stock” group is likely to score better on the criteria of reciprocity and identity than immigrants who are just entering the country. In this latter view, migration inflows will be particularly relevant with respect to public activation preferences. The integration of both variables into the analyses enables us to consider both perspectives. We retrieved the data for the migration flow variable from the OECD’s International Migration Outlook (2017). Descriptive statistics indicate that migration flows in 2015 varied between countries and have been lowest in

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

Poland (0.2 per cent) and highest in Switzerland (1.6 per cent). For the variable on the share of the foreign-born population, we use information provided by the OECD International Migration Outlook 2016. Descriptive statistics again show variation between countries with lowest shares in Poland (1.6 per cent) and highest shares in Switzerland (29.1 per cent). In addition to those contextual variables, we include an individual level variable accounting for potential individual welfare chauvinistic attitudes. This variable is operationalized using a question where respondents are asked to indicate at what point they think immigrants should obtain rights to social benefits and/or services (ESS Round 8, 2016). The answer options range from “immediately on arrival” (1) to “they should never get the same rights” (5). Furthermore, we test whether migration does strengthen and/or weaken the link between individual labour market vulnerabilities and LMP preferences by including interactions between our migration variables and dummy variables, indicating the labour market position of individuals and associated vulnerabilities. For the latter, we combined different information from the ESS questionnaire in order to build the following five categories: (1) individuals currently in paid work who do not consider it (very) likely that they will be unemployed and looking for work during the next 12 months; (2) individuals in paid work who do consider it (very) likely that they will be unemployed and looking for work during the next 12 months; (3) unemployed individuals who are actively looking for a job; (4) all others in the working age (including students, people taking care at home, etc.); and (5) individuals aged 65 years or more or/and who indicated being retired. We use (1), that is, people in paid work who “feel safe” as a reference category in our models. We suggest that the currently unemployed individuals (group 3) are the most vulnerable group with regards to the tight labour market situation followed by group 2, while group 4 is somewhere between group 2 and the reference category. Conversely, retired individuals should not be personally affected by such a policy change. Last but not least, and in accordance with our assumptions concerning potential associations between negative perceptions of the unemployed and preferences for LMP, we include interactions between our main independent variables and a dummy variable that takes the value one if respondents (strongly) agree to the following statement: “Most unemployed people do not really try to find a job” (ESS Round 8, 2016). In our models, we control for different factors which have proven to be pertinent in explaining individual welfare attitudes, that is, the respondents’ sex and educational level (dummies for “primary education” and “secondary

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education”; the reference category in the models is “tertiary education”). We also control for general labour market policy support. We measure this based on a question where respondents had to indicate on a score from 0–10 how much responsibility they think governments should have to ensure a reasonable standard of living for the unemployed. Zero means that it should not be the governments’ responsibility at all, and 10 means that it should be entirely the governments’ responsibility. The main reason for including this variable is that preferences for shifting efforts from passive to active LMP may also depend on whether state support for the unemployed is wanted at all. More precisely, we assume that support for shifting public efforts from PLMP to ALMP may generally – and independently of the other factors discussed above – be higher the less individuals are in favour of the government taking responsibility to ensure a reasonable standard of living for the unemployed. At the context level, we control for country-specific unemployment rates of the native and foreign-born population.4 Not only are these two country-level variables likely linked to both the dependent variable as well as to our central independent variable, unemployment is also one of the most frequently used indicators to capture a country’s economic performance and social policy pressure (Van Oorschot & Meuleman 2014). Given that we are limited with respect to the number of contextual variables that we can integrate into our models, these two can therefore be considered reasonable controls for important economic and migration related dynamics. Data for the two variables was retrieved from the OECD International Migration Outlook 2016. Furthermore, we integrated a dummy variable to distinguish between Western and Eastern European countries. We restrict our sample to individuals who are citizens of the country they live in. Our final sample includes more than 31,000 individuals living in 20 European countries.5 Descriptive information on our dependent and independent variables can be found in the Appendix (Table 2.A.1.).

Results The following presents the results of the multilevel models. This section begins by discussing empirical evidence regarding the question of whether a context of strong migration is related to individual support for shifting public efforts from passive to active labour market policies. In a second step, the focus lies on testing whether migration could influence the role of self-interest and normative and justice beliefs.

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

Table 2.1 initially documents that individual level factors are systematically related to individual support for shifting efforts from passive to active labour market policies. We find empirical support for both the self-interest mechanisms and the relevance of normative and justice beliefs. In accordance with the self-interest assumption, the unemployed and those who fear becoming unemployed are least likely to exhibit preferences for shifting efforts from PLMP to ALMP. Conversely, individuals who do not fear becoming unemployed are more likely to prefer these policies. Similarly, concerning attitudes towards the unemployed, individuals who think that the unemployed do not do enough to get a job are more strongly in favour of shifting efforts towards ALMP. Finally, individuals who assign a strong responsibility to the state to protect citizens against the risk of unemployment exhibit weaker preferences for more active policies. Overall, these results are a first indication that active and passive labour market policies are indeed “different” (Fossati, 2018), that is, that individuals make a difference when evaluating active and passive labour market policies. The conclusion is further supported by Table 2.A.2 in the Appendix, which documents an OLS regression with our variable measuring general support for the public unemployment policy as a dependent variable. In fact, while vulnerable persons reject a stronger focus on activation, the results in Table 2.A.2 show that they generally endorse state support for the unemployed. This pattern is reversed among less vulnerable individuals and those who perceive the unemployed rather negatively, suggesting that ALMP is perceived as less generous and more demanding than other types of unemployment policies. Thus, in the view of this latter group, unemployed people should not “just get state support”, but rather invest in their employability. An exception to this are retired individuals who, even though not affected by any LMP anymore, do not support stronger activation policies. Interestingly, the coefficient for welfare chauvinist attitudes is negatively (not positively) related to support for stronger activation in the basic model. Thus, individuals with welfare chauvinistic views do reject shifting efforts from passive to active LMP. The additional analyses presented in Table 2.A.2 in the Appendix suggest that these individuals are generally against state support for the unemployed. A stronger activation seems not to change the general pattern. Moving to our variable of interest, the migration context, we do not find empirical support for our first hypothesis. Neither a strong migration inflow, nor a high share of foreign-born individuals in the country, that is, the stock of migrants, is systematically related to preferences for shifting public efforts from

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35

passive to active labour market policies. All results presented so far are robust to only include one of the two migration variables at a time (models 1b and 1c). Figures 2.A.1 and 2.A.2 in the Appendix further support this conclusion: they do not reveal a clear relationship between country-specific migration inflows or stocks and the country-specific shares of ALMP supporters. Table 2.1

Basic models on the support for shifting efforts from PLMP to ALMP (1)

(1b)

(1c)

Paid and vulnerable (ref. category paid and not vulnerable)

-0.243*** (0.048)

-0.243*** (0.048)

-0.243*** (0.048)

Unemployed

-0.465*** (0.066)

-0.465*** (0.066)

-0.465*** (0.066)

Not working

-0.024 (0.035)

-0.024 (0.035)

-0.024 (0.035)

Retired

-0.063* (0.033)

-0.063* (0.033)

-0.063* (0.033)

Unemp. lack will

0.305*** (0.028)

0.305*** (0.028)

0.305*** (0.028)

Welfare chauvinism

-0.025* (0.013)

-0.025* (0.013)

-0.025* (0.013)

Support for public LMP

-0.085*** (0.006)

-0.085*** (0.006)

-0.085*** (0.006)

Primary

-0.134** (0.054)

-0.134** (0.054)

-0.134** (0.054)

Secondary

-0.132*** (0.032)

-0.132*** (0.032)

-0.132*** (0.032)

Sex: female

-0.089*** (0.025)

-0.089*** (0.025)

-0.089*** (0.025)

Migration inflow

-0.200 (0.520)

-0.188 (0.345)

Stock of foreign-born

0.001 (0.031)

Employment groups

Education (ref. category Tertiary)

-0.008 (0.021)

36

A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO WELFARE

(1)

(1b)

(1c)

Unemp. rate: Foreign-born

0.022 (0.039)

0.022 (0.039)

0.020 (0.039)

Unemp. rate: Natives

-0.059 (0.058)

-0.058 (0.057)

-0.049 (0.053)

Western European country

0.359 (0.282)

0.360 (0.279)

0.340 (0.278)

Intercept

1.554*** (0.391)

1.554*** (0.391)

1.486*** (0.350)

Observations

31,192

31,192

31,192

Log likelihood

-18,806.240

-18,806.240

-18,806.310

Akaike inf. crit.

37,646.470

37,644.470

37,644.620

Bayesian inf. crit.

37,788.390

37,778.040

37,778.180

Note: Log odds, standard errors in brackets. p**p***p