When Explanations for Poverty Help Explain Social Policy Preferences: The Case of European Public Opinion Amidst the Economic Recession (2009\u20132014)

Lionel Marquis,Jan Rosset

doi:10.1007/s11211-021-00381-0

Lionel Marquis, Jan Rosset

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-021-00381-0

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Abstract

Individuals hold beliefs about what causes poverty, and those beliefs have been theorized to explain policy preferences and ultimately cross-country variations in welfare states. However, there has been little empirical work on the effects of poverty attributions on welfare state attitudes. We seek to fill this gap by making use of Eurobarometer data from 27 European countries in the years 2009, 2010 and 2014 to explore the effects of poverty attributions on judgments about economic inequality as well as preferences regarding the welfare state. Relying on a four-type typology of poverty attribution which includes individual fate, individual blame, social fate and social blame as potential explanations for poverty, our analyses show that these poverty attributions are associated with judgments about inequality and broadly defined support for the welfare state, but have little or no effect on more concrete policy proposals such as unemployment benefits or increase of social welfare at the expense of higher taxes.

Highlights

Why are some people poor? Most of us have opinions on what causes poverty
Popular explanations for poverty have been at the heart of sociological work on the welfare state in the 1970s and 1980s, but interest in the topic has somewhat dwindled since
We argue that poverty attributions inform about individuals’ perceptions of deservingness of welfare state beneficiaries as well as about their views regarding the ability of society to curb poverty and should be closely related to policy preferences

Summary

Introduction

Why are some people poor? Most of us have opinions on what causes poverty. As a matter of fact, these “lay explanations for poverty” (as the early literature called them, to stress the distinction with experts’ accounts of poverty) are highly variableInstitute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 2 Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva, Geneva, SwitzerlandSocial Justice Research from one individual to the next. Poverty attributions are not directly related to support for the welfare state when guaranteeing social protection is said to be conditional on an increase in individual taxes. People who attribute poverty to social fate are expected to display more support for welfare policies than people blaming poverty on the poor themselves, but less support than people endorsing a “social blame” explanation.

Results

Conclusion