What, where, and how: drivers of welfare attitudes toward work-family reconciliation policies in South European societies

Abstract

ABSTRACT With increasing female labour market participation, welfare states in Europe have aimed to reorient their policies in order to face a newly emerging social risk – difficulties to combine work and family roles. Yet, they differ in the extent of this adaptation, which has been associated with multiple factors including the influence of cultural values or ideas towards care. In this article, we employ the European Social Survey (Round 8) to examine whether and how not only self-interests but also values influence public willingness to pay for extending state’s work-family reconciliation policies in Italy, Portugal, and Spain, where care provision traditionally was in the family. Although South European welfare states are often considered to be similarly influenced by traditional gender and family values, the findings of this study contribute to the evidence that there are important differences between them.