Abstract
How tightly linked are the strength of a country’s welfare state and its residents’ support for income redistribution? Multilevel model results (with appropriate controls) show that the publics of strong welfare states recognize their egalitarian income distributions, i.e., the stronger the welfare state, the less the actual and perceived inequality; but they do not differ from their peers in liberal welfare states/market-oriented societies in their preferences for equality. Thus, desire for redistribution bears little overall relationship to welfare state activity. However, further investigation shows a stronger relationship under the surface: Poor people’s support for redistribution is nearly constant across levels of welfarism. By contrast, the stronger the welfare state, the less the support for redistribution among the prosperous, perhaps signaling “harvest fatigue” due to paying high taxes and longstanding egalitarian policies. Our findings are not consistent with structuralist/materialist theory, nor with simple dominant ideology or system justification arguments, but are partially consistent with a legitimate framing hypothesis, with an atomistic self-interest hypothesis, with a reference group solidarity hypothesis, and with the “me-and-mine” hypothesis incorporating sociotropic and egotropic elements. Database: the World Inequality Study: 30 countries, 71 surveys, and over 88,0000 individuals.
Highlights
Welfare State Strength (Welfarism) and Redistribution AttitudesHow closely is a country’s intensity and style of welfare state aligned with its citizens’ perceptions of their society and their attitudes and values? Does a country’s level of social spending and degree of corporatism match well with public opinion? These questions lie at the heart of theories of feedback between individuals and institutions and are relevant to many sociological arguments about how strongly institutions influence culture.The tremendous productivity of modern socio-economic arrangements and technological innovation spawns riches at a level undreamt of in past centuries
This paper considers the welfare state as a set of institutions which is widely relevant to the populace, as all members of a society potentially benefit from goods and services provided by the welfare state and most pay taxes that support it
We focus on the relationship between welfarism and redistribution attitudes
Summary
Welfare State Strength (Welfarism) and Redistribution AttitudesHow closely is a country’s intensity and style of welfare state aligned with its citizens’ perceptions of their society and their attitudes and values? Does a country’s level of social spending and degree of corporatism match well with public opinion? These questions lie at the heart of theories of feedback between individuals and institutions and are relevant to many sociological arguments about how strongly institutions influence culture.The tremendous productivity of modern socio-economic arrangements and technological innovation spawns riches at a level undreamt of in past centuries. Consider our finding that the stronger the welfarism, the less inequality people perceive This negative statistical association only makes sense with welfarism being the causal influence and perceptions being the response. Our finding that the stronger the welfarism, the less do prosperous people support redistribution only makes sense with welfarism as the causal influence and support for redistribution as a response. The counterfactual—that prosperous people’s declining support for redistribution causes the welfare state to expand and strengthen—is absurd. In this domain, it is plausible to take welfarism as potentially causal and redistribution attitudes as responsive, so we will use that language in discussing our results
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