Social Welfare Attitudes in Mainland China: International Comparison and Chinese Context

PurposeThe paper presents a study on whether citizens’ immigration attitudes shape their attitudes towards social welfare in three Nordic countries.Design/methodology/approachThe main analysis was performed using linear regression analysis. Data were retrieved from the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016). The data cover the Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish respondents (N = 5,021).FindingsThe analyses indicate that citizens’ immigration attitudes are associated with their social welfare attitudes. The more positive the attitudes towards immigration are, the more positive the attitudes toward social welfare will be. Further, people in the political Left have more positive attitudes towards social welfare compared to those in the political Right; but, the immigration issue is more divisive of the political Left’s opinion than that of the Right.Research limitations/implicationsPublic opinion research has its limitations because behind an individual’s opinion there are many hidden factors. An individual may also have different opinions depending on the dimensions of the welfare state.Social implicationsIf the immigration issue reduces the support for social welfare among the political Left, it may reduce the legitimacy of the Nordic social policy because the support of the political Left has traditionally been in favour of the universal principles of the welfare state.Originality/valueThe association of the immigration issue and social welfare attitudes has been broadly studied; but, the interaction of the immigration issue and political opinion on social welfare attitudes is less studied.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine young people’s attitudes toward social welfare and their perceptions of who is responsible for providing social welfare benefits.Design/methodology/approach– Social welfare attitudes were examined related to three themes: government responsibility, trust in society, and individual responsibility. A sample of 725 students from 12 high and vocational schools in south Finland was used for analysis.Findings– The data suggest that young people have a high regard for the importance of the government’s role as a social support and a mechanism of social welfare for all citizens. In addition, the results show that women highlight government responsibility more than men, and that men highlight the individual’s own responsibility for social issues. According to the results, there is a weak relationship between cultural values and social welfare attitudes. Collective values relate positively to an emphasis on trust in government and government responsibility for social problems, and relate negatively to an emphasis on individuals’ personal responsibility.Originality/value– The study shows that the main principles of the welfare state are still accepted by the Finnish youth, although recent speculations about the future of welfare states.

The effects of social class on social welfare attitudes A mediating role of fairness perceptions——Evidence from two welfare states and China

What makes some Americans assume that social welfare programs will benefit immigrants rather than native-born Americans? How do these assumptions shape their attitudes about policy? Recent observational research has shown that immigration attitudes and social welfare attitudes are strongly correlated, but we lack evidence of exactly how this relationship works. In this pre-registered survey experiment, I study respondents’ assumptions about beneficiaries of a generic social welfare policy, and test the effects of different “threat” primes on the assumption that the policy benefits immigrants rather than native-born Americans. I find that a prime constructing immigrants as a fiscal threat increases the likelihood that a respondent will make this assumption, while a prime emphasizing cultural or demographic threat has no significant effect. These effects vary by geographic context, but not by relevant attitudes. Attitudes about immigration become an important predictor of policy approval when this assumption is triggered.

We aim to examine (1) variations in the public awareness of poverty as a determinant of health and (2) associations of individual and macro level factors with awareness. Analyses are based on the International Social Survey Programme. Data stem from 23 countries (N=37,228) that were assigned to six welfare states. Sociodemographic, socio-economic, and health-related factors were considered as individual level characteristics. Gross domestic product, relative poverty rate, Gini coefficient, and magnitude of health inequalities were additionally introduced as macro level factors. About 47% of the respondents in all countries agreed with the statement that people suffer from severe health problems because they are poor (range 30-77%). Multilevel analyses reveal that awareness was least pronounced in Liberal, East European, and East Asian welfare regimes. Moreover, women, older adults, respondents with low education and income, as well as poor health were more likely to show awareness. There is a need to raise public awareness of the adverse health effects of poverty as the public opinion can be an important driver of political will on health and social issues.

Public support for unemployment provision is essential to provide political legitimacy for welfare policy arrangements and yet it is understudied in East Asian welfare states. In contrast with the proposed unfavourable attitudes towards welfare among East Asian countries from the developmental/productivist perspectives, the study suggests socio-demographic and ideological differences in public attitudes towards the role of government in unemployment provision within and across Japan, (South) Korea, and Taiwan, which differ in welfare production regime and extent of labour market dualization. Data from the 2016 Role of Government V survey of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) was analysed. Findings revealed lower levels of public support for unemployment provision in large firm-oriented welfare production regimes like Japan and Korea, though in which labour market outsiders such as women, younger people, and unemployed workers were more supportive than their counterparts. Despite cross-national attitudinal differences, higher levels of support were consistently found in the lowest-income groups across three East Asian countries. The study provides new evidence of diverse patterns of welfare attitudes regarding unemployment provision in the East Asian welfare regimes. It also presents the need of (un)employment protection among labour market outsiders and low-income groups within these countries.

There is little research examining the gender gap in public opinion among Americans of African descent. Amid emerging evidence that Black men are more conservative than Black women, there is reason to believe there may be gender differences in their policy preferences. We use the 1980-2016 cumulative ANES data to observe when racial and gender considerations will be more salient for Black women in determining their policy preferences. We find no gender gap on race-based policies suggesting racial group interests may be driving similar support among Black men and women. We do find gender differences on women’s issues and social welfare policies. We attribute Black women’s support for women’s issues to their gendered interests and demonstrate the gap in social welfare attitudes is mediated by their lower economic status relative to Black men. Despite these differences, we discover that Black men and women support race-oriented and social welfare policies more than either white men or women.

Part 1: Welfare in East Asia: Introduction: East Asian welfare regimes ~ Alan Walker and Chack-kie Wong Is welfare unAsian? ~ Ruby C.M. Chau and Wai Kam Yu Part 2: The East Asian welfare regimes: Social welfare in China ~ Joe C.B. Leung Hong Kong: from familistic to Confucian welfare ~ Sammy Chiu and Victor Wong Managing welfare in post-colonial Hong Kong ~ Chack Kwan Chan The welfare regime in Japan ~ Makoto Kono Taiwan: what kind of social policy regime? ~ Michael Hill and Yuan-shie Hwang The development of the South Korean welfare regime ~ Sang-hoon Ahn and So-chung Lee The welfare regime in Singapore ~ Vincent Wijeysingha Conclusion: from Confucianism to globalisation ~ Alan Walker and Chack-kie Wong.

The main subject of this chapter is the real-typical side of comparative welfare regime analysis. Welfare state systems from Singapore, South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan are examined from a close distance, focusing on their in-depth institutional particularities. When looking at East Asian welfare state systems, it is useful to apply an ideal-typical (Weberian) method especially when looking at larger international and historical developments, while other methods of applying real types are also highly beneficial for welfare state analysis in comparative perspective. When applying the real-typical method, in particular, the relative weaknesses and strengths of various welfare subsystems come into sharper view, as seen in this chapter’s review of specific welfare state systems in Asia. Important insights are gained about the extent to which incentive structures of each social security system increase or decrease effectiveness and efficiency of the overall welfare state system in place.

The present chapter will illustrate the features of increasing inequality in Japan and South Korea in the context of globalization. Together with other societies in East Asia, these two societies share some common civilizational backgrounds and historical experiences in the modern era. But East Asia is a very broad geopolitical category including Northeast Asia (China, Japan, South and North Korea, Taiwan) and Southeast Asia (ten ASEAN countries). All these countries have developed diverse cultural and institutional traditions. There are at least three East Asian development models, among which Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan represent a specifi cally government-driven model as distinguished from other East Asian development models. Scholars have categorized parts of the region in different ways as well. In the discussions about the “East Asian welfare regime,” the term East Asia referred to various combinations of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and sometimes also Mainland China (Esping-Anderson 1996; Holliday 2000; Kwon 1997).

Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short-Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare

Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social welfare attitudes has emphasized the role of political factors such as economic self‐interest and ideology. Here, we demonstrate that attitudes to social welfare are also influenced by short‐term fluctuations in hunger. Using theories in evolutionary psychology, we predict that hungry individuals will be greedier and take more resources from others while also attempting to induce others to share by signaling cooperative intentions and expressing support for sharing, including evolutionarily novel forms of sharing such as social welfare. We test these predictions using self‐reported hunger data as well as comparisons of subjects who participated in relevant online studies before and after eating lunch. Across four studies collected in two different welfare regimes—the United Kingdom and Denmark—we consistently find that hungry individuals act in a greedier manner but describe themselves as more cooperative and express greater support for social welfare.

Since Esping‐Andersen presented the three worlds of welfare typology thesis, the study of the classification of welfare regimes has been dominated by his work and the debates surrounding it. This article is concerned with two important responses to his work. The first response is the development of welfare typologies based on the principle of decommodification. The second response is the concern that East Asian countries are underrepresented in the 18 members of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) studied by Esping‐Andersen. As a result, there are calls for expanding the scope of the studies on the classification of welfare regimes to those in East Asia.This article makes contributions to these two responses by presenting two analytical tasks. The first task is to develop two health decommodification typologies based on two different methods (cluster analysis and Esping‐Andersen's index‐based regime construction). Both of them cover the 18 OECD members studied by Esping‐Andersen and four tiger economies (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore). The second task is to demonstrate that the two health decommodification typologies provide important information for the debate on the existence of two essential preconditions for the development of an all‐encompassing East Asian welfare regime, namely the existence of significant differences in the welfare systems between the East Asian countries and the 18 OECD countries studied by Esping‐Andersen (1990) and the existence of significant similarities in the welfare systems between East Asian countries.

This book aims to provide an up-to date, accessible and critical account of the welfare regimes of the main East Asian states and China. It puts the spotlight on the Chinese and East Asian welfare regimes — the so-called 'Confucian Welfare States' — in order to provide an assessment of their nature and development, their current dilemmas and their future prospects. This chapter describes the scope of the book, noting the western construction of the welfare state, welfare state regime theory and East Asian welfare systems, Confucian welfare states and globalisation.

Evidence suggests that mistrust of government contributes directly to a lack of support for social welfare programs. An alternative explanation, however, is that many citizens are ambivalent concerning government and the role that it should play in society today and, as result, are less likely to support such programs. Based on our analysis of data from a 2004 telephone survey of Florida residents, we conclude that, first, ambivalent feelings concerning the federal, state, and local levels of government in the United States are fairly common; second, ambivalence has consequences for people's opinions on matters of public policy—specifically, those with conflicted feelings are less likely to endorse progressive action in the social welfare realm; third, self‐identified conservatives tend to be more ambivalent concerning government than liberals; and finally, the observed negative relationship between ambivalence and social welfare liberalism is especially pronounced among conservatives.