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Authors:Angie Gago, Constantin Hruschka Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Legal uncertainty may hinder the effective implementation of public policies. Still, the political and legal dynamics that underpin its persistence are underexplored. This article proposes that legal uncertainty is more likely to persist in multi-level political and legal systems where actors with authority on the same issue hold different interpretations of rules. Also, it suggests that, under these conditions, actors can use legal uncertainty as an opportunity to advance their own interests. We illustrate this argument by investigating the legal uncertainty concerning EU citizens’ access to social benefits in Germany. Through the analysis of social legislation and courts’ rulings, the article shows that different interpretations of EU law by domestic actors hindered the possibilities of settling uncertainty: national courts of different levels used litigation processes and referrals to the Court of Justice of the European Union to advance their legal interpretations and the German government profited from the uncertainty to exclude EU citizens from social benefits. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-16T08:30:16Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221095028
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Authors:Jennifer Allsopp Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. The experiences of unaccompanied young migrants and refugees challenge the idea of a common European asylum policy but also show that traditional welfare typologies used to account for differences in welfare across states fail to account for the lived experiences of this group. They do not consider the shifting categorizations of young migrants in institutional terms, nor how the stratification of their social rights plays out over place and time. Moreover, current welfare typologies give inadequate attention to the increasing intersection of the labour market and opportunities for regularization, the relative importance and role of the state in the welfare mix, and the nexus of access to welfare and immigration enforcement. This article draws on qualitative longitudinal research in England and Italy to argue that rather than experiencing welfare through the lens of Liberal (England) versus Conservative or Mediterranean (Italy) regimes, unaccompanied young migrants and refugees in these countries are better understood as navigating different systems of ‘iron rod welfare’ and ‘colander welfare’. In England, the nexus between welfare and legal status is policed by an iron rod on one side of which exists a plethora of social rights, but on the other the risk of a proactive detention and deportation regime. In Italy, meanwhile, the holes of the colander denote gaps in protection but also possibilities to navigate alternative welfare strategies independently of the state. The ability to act independently of the state is an important but under-theorized capability for this population, for whom the state is a more ambiguous actor than is traditionally considered in European social policy. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-12T11:19:44Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221095056
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Authors:Philipp Stiemke, Moritz Hess Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Involuntary retirement transitions have a variety of negative consequences for individuals and society as they can lead to poorer health or lower wellbeing. Therefore, it is of high relevance to better understand the factors influencing the voluntariness of retirement transitions. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify the known determinants of the voluntariness of retirement. Our final review includes 14 studies that empirically investigate this topic. Differentiated by micro-, meso- and macro-levels, we present the identified factors and discuss different ways of operationalizing voluntary or involuntary retirement. We found that most studies analyse individual factors. There is a gap in research on influencing factors at the company level as well as the welfare state level. In addition, it is of interest to examine whether and to what extent pension and labour market policy reforms have led to changes over time. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-11T08:50:07Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221089465
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Authors:Marius R Busemeyer Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an enormous challenge for healthcare systems around the globe. Using original panel survey data for the case of Germany, this article studies how specific trust in the healthcare system to cope with this crisis has evolved during the course of the pandemic and whether this specific form of trust is associated with general political trust. The article finds strong evidence for a positive and robust association between generalized political trust and performance perceptions regarding the efficiency and fairness of the crisis response as well as individual treatment conditions. The article also shows that specific trust in healthcare remained relatively stable throughout 2020, but declined significantly in the spring of 2021. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-11T03:38:55Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221085922
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Authors:Ivana Dobrotić Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This article explores the (in)equality dynamic of childcare-related policy reforms in post-Yugoslav countries to expose ‘silent’ cleavages embedded in parenting leaves and early childhood education and care policies design that may challenge or reinforce parental (in)equalities in employment and care opportunities. It is guided by the principles and (sub-)questions of intersectionality-based policy analysis to determine who benefits and/or is excluded from the policy goals and allocation of childcare-related resources. All former Yugoslav republics initially relied on gendered and selective childcare-related policy design, empowering only a fraction of working mothers. In the last three decades only Slovenia equalized the potential of childcare-related policy allowing various parents to more easily engage in care and employment. The other post-Yugoslav countries that were more exposed to the post-1990 societal re-traditionalization and cost-containment measures mostly exacerbated the existing or created new layers of inequalities and (dis)advantages intersecting along gender, class, ethnical and spatial lines. While enacting more socially inclusive leaves, they also amplified the systematic exclusion of some parents from access to childcare-related rights and the opportunity to work and care. Parents, particularly mothers in precarious employment, ethnic minorities and ‘new’ migrants, as well as those living in less developed areas, were the most affected by the (absence of) reforms. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-09T09:15:37Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221088167
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Authors:Giovanni Amerigo Giuliani, Dario Raspanti Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. The literature concerning active labour market policy (ALMP) in advanced economies during the post-Fordist Age is very informative. Nevertheless, surprisingly, we know little about ALMP politicization. By focusing on two archetypes of the Mediterranean countries, Italy and Spain, this study argues that the geographical distribution of social stratification affects ALMP politicization at the national level. Analysing the party manifestos of the main nationwide parties in the most recent electoral turnouts (2013–2019), this article shows that while the issue is highly politicized in Spain, it is almost completely neglected in Italy. We demonstrate that when outsiderness is concentrated in a delimited geographical area, as in Italy, it hinders ALMP politicization on a national level, since it becomes a regional issue. On the contrary, when it is spread across the whole national territory, as in Spain, ALMP politicization is more likely, since the issue is nationally relevant. However, the concentration of outsiders is not sufficient to trigger a change in the electoral competition dynamic and the intervening effect of policy legacy may enhance or constrain ALMP politicization. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-09T07:24:26Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221095032
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Authors:Marit Skivenes, Rami Benbenishty Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. In this study, we examine the trust placed by the populations of nine jurisdictions in their child protection systems. These systems protect children’s rights and grant authority for invasive interventions to curtail or even terminate parental rights and responsibilities. We have representative samples of the populations of each jurisdiction. The results show that about 40–50% of respondents express trust in the child protection agencies, social workers and judges who make decisions. There are clear differences between jurisdictions, with the Anglo-American countries at the lower end of the trust scale. Examining the impact of institutional context, we find that institutional context matters for the degree of peoples’ trust in the child protection system. This indicates that the typology of child protection systems has relevance, and more empirical studies are encouraged. Some demographic characteristics (age, having children, income, education) and ideological variables (political orientation) are also correlated with trust levels. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-09T01:21:10Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221088172
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Authors:Margherita Bussi, Claire Dupuy, Virginie Van Ingelgom Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This article asks how the most prominent recent changes in European welfare states are relevant for citizens’ political participation and attitudes toward politics, specifically citizens’ political efficacy, political interest, political trust and attribution of responsibility. We consider changes in benefits, in the form of generosity levels and conditionality, and changes in modes of delivery, including both marketization and rescaling. Reviewing the policy feedback on mass publics literature, a mainly US-centric scholarship, the article suggests that the mostly negative impacts that are theoretically expected are to be qualified in the European contexts. The article thereby reflects on the contributions and limits to what can be learned from this body of research to illuminate European cases; and it derives a research agenda to study policy feedbacks on mass publics in western Europe. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-05-09T01:16:34Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221089478
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Authors:Stephen Allan Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. There is a general trend of increased marketization of long-term care (LTC) services across Europe, with the natural consequence that market forces will affect the supply of LTC. At the same time, there has been a rapid increase in the use of home-based provision for those requiring LTC support. However, there is little evidence about what the effects of growing domiciliary care provision has on the markets for institutional forms of care. This is important from a policy point of view in terms of managing local markets, access to services, the quality of services and inequality. Using data from England for all care homes and domiciliary care providers registered to provide care to older people during 2014–2016, we assessed if increased domiciliary care supply was linked to increased likelihood of care home closure. Using Cox proportional hazard models of care home closure controlling for care home characteristics including quality and local area measures of needs and income, the findings provide no evidence that domiciliary care provision is a substitute for care homes. In some specifications, there was even a complementary relationship between the two forms of social care: increased domiciliary care supply significantly reduced the likelihood of care home closure. Potential reasons for the complementary relationship and implications for European LTC policy are discussed. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-04-20T08:52:17Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221083835
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Authors:Pezer Martina Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Public policies supporting families with children differ among countries but with the same goal of improving the well-being of children. Using a microsimulation model, this article assesses the cash support which families receive for their children in Croatia, Greece, Germany, the Slovak Republic, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The impact of policies across the income distribution on different family sizes, child-rearing cost compensation and child poverty is estimated. A method for the calculation of child-contingent payments for each child by order of birth in the family is proposed as a complementary indicator of policy design. The results confirm that a combination of universal and targeted support (either from family or social assistance benefits) is the most effective in poverty reduction and cost compensation. While high support for larger families greatly reduces poverty, generous universal or even lower support for large families has proved to be at least equally effective. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-04-16T05:20:53Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221080700
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Authors:Krzysztof Czarnecki Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. The article conceptualizes student funding systems in order to investigate their ideological and political underpinnings. Using different long-term measures of cumulative power of four-party families and their combinations, and the newly created Student Support and Fees Dataset, it shows that the variety of student social rights in 32 high-income democracies in 2015 can be linked to past partisan politics. Decommodification, understood as making higher education study unconditional on labour income of students and their families, was positively associated with the rule of pro-welfare parties and negatively with the rule of Conservative parties, in the preceding two decades. Individualization, that is the state support for student transition to independent adulthood, was positively associated with the rule of left-wing parties. This, however, applies only to their long-term impact in older democracies and is to a large extent conditional on a country’s wealth. Third, social rights distribution characterized by a low degree of targeting and large recipiency rate was similarly related to the Left rule, while the Conservatives ruling in the last two decades contributed to increasing inequalities in student social rights. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-04-11T06:20:36Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221080704
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Authors:Tim Goedemé, Benoit Decerf, Karel Van den Bosch Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. The methodology currently used to measure poverty in the European Union faces some important limitations. Capturing key aspects of poverty is done using a dashboard of indicators, which often tell conflicting stories. We propose a new income-based measure of poverty for Europe that captures in a consistent way in a single indicator the level of relative poverty, the intensity of poverty, poverty with a threshold anchored in time and a pan-European perspective on poverty. To do so, we work with a recently developed poverty index, the extended headcount ratio (EHC) and derive the relevant poverty lines to apply the index to poverty in Europe. We show empirically that our measure consistently captures the aspects typically monitored using a variety of indicators and yields rankings that seem more aligned with intuitions than those obtained by these individual indicators. According to our measure, Eastern Europe has a much higher level of poverty than Southern Europe, which, in turn, has a considerably higher level of poverty than North-Western Europe. In North-Western Europe, the evolution of our measure over time correlates most strongly with the at-risk-of-poverty rate, while in Southern and Eastern Europe, it correlates most strongly with at-risk-of-poverty with the threshold anchored in time. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-03-21T05:40:33Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221080414
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Authors:Lukas Fervers, Anna Kurowska Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. In spite of increasing levels of female employment, having a child below school age often goes along with a substantial decrease in employment engagement for women. Consequently, previous family policy research suggests that increasing childcare availability might be a promising tool to facilitate maternal employment as it increases the economic incentive to take up work. Another line of reasoning highlights that cultural attitudes towards maternal employment are equally important in shaping the employment decisions of mothers. In this article, we combine insights of both approaches and argue that culture, in addition to its direct effect on maternal employment, moderates the impact of childcare policies. In particular, we argue that the positive effect of childcare may be weaker in more conservative cultural contexts. To assess this question empirically, we exploit the implementation of a centralised childcare reform in Poland as a natural experiment by means of a regression discontinuity design. Relying on individual-level data on employment and regional-level information on the influence of conservatism in a certain region, we run multilevel regressions with cross-level interaction terms to estimate the effect of the reform depending on the local cultural context. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, the impact of the reform is rather strong in less conservative areas but fades away in increasingly conservative contexts. Supplementary analyses reveal that the effect also differs with regard to household composition, with smaller families displaying larger gains in maternal employment. These findings confirm that conservative cultural attitudes appear to suppress the positive effect of increasing childcare availability. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-03-03T11:15:54Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221080395
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Authors:Mara A. Yerkes, Chantal Remery, Stéfanie André, Milla Salin, Mia Hakovirta, Minna van Gerven Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. One year after the European work–life balance directive, which recognises the need for work–family policy support, measures to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic began shaping parents’ work–life balance in significant ways. Academically, we are challenged to explore whether existing theoretical frameworks hold in this new environment with combined old and new policy frameworks. We are also challenged to understand the nuanced ways in which the first lockdown affects the combination of paid work and care. We address both of these issues, providing a cross-sectional comparative analysis of highly educated mothers’ perceptions of work–life balance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland and the Netherlands. Our findings show that highly educated Finnish mothers have more difficulty combining work and care during the first lockdown than Dutch mothers. The absence of state-provided care during the lockdown creates greater difficulty for full-time working Finnish mothers in a dual-earner/state-carer system than an absence of such care in the Dutch one-and-a-half earner system, where most mothers work part time. Further analyses suggest variation in part-time and (nearly) full-time hours mitigates the work–life balance experiences of highly educated Dutch mothers. Additional factors explaining cross-country variation or similarities include the presence of young children and the presence of a partner. We discuss these findings in light of current theoretical frameworks and highlight avenues for future research. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-03-02T06:29:31Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221080411
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Authors:Leire Rincón, Tim Vlandas, Heikki Hiilamo Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. After decades of debates on the economic and philosophical merits and shortcomings of a universal basic income (UBI), more recent literature has started to investigate the politics of a UBI. While several studies shed new light on the individual characteristics associated with higher or lower support for a UBI, we still do not know what features of a UBI itself are attractive or not to people, nor whether other slightly different policy alternatives like means-tested and minimum incomes would be more popular. This article addresses this gap by employing a conjoint experiment fielded in Finland, where a UBI has received significant media and political attention. Our findings show that the most contentious dimension of a UBI is – surprisingly – not its universality, but instead its unconditional nature. Individuals are more likely to support policies that condition receipts upon searching for employment or being genuinely unable to work, and less likely to support policies that are fully unconditional. On the funding side, support tends to be lower for a UBI that is linked to reducing existing benefits, but higher if the UBI is to be funded by increasing taxes, especially on the rich. These findings contribute to a wider literature on the politics of UBI and to our understanding of the potential popularity of competing policy reform alternatives. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-03-01T05:52:41Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211072638
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Authors:Anat Herbst-Debby Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This article contributes to the theoretical discussion of the historical legitimacy of single mothers by examining the construction of relationships between single motherhood and welfare policy. Specifically, the study analyzes the changing discourse regarding single mothers, and the social policy designed for them, in the US, UK and Israel from the 1970s to the 2000s. These three countries are similar in terms of the embeddedness, extension and institutionalization of neoliberal ideology in their welfare policies and public discourse, together with welfare legislation affecting single mothers, yet they differ in terms of policy implementation and the history of policy development. The study examines institutional intersectionality along with cultural perceptions of single mothers in each country. Looking at both the development and the withdrawal of social rights over time, we deepen understanding of how the image of the single mother is created in the neoliberal welfare regime. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-02-11T04:13:00Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287221076743
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Authors:Erdem Yörük, İbrahim Öker, Gabriela Ramalho Tafoya First page: 119 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. What welfare state regimes are observed when the analysis is extended globally, empirically and theoretically' We introduce a novel perspective into the ‘welfare state regimes analyses’ – a perspective that brings developed and developing countries together and, as such, broadens the geographical, empirical and theoretical scope of the ‘welfare modelling business’. The expanding welfare regimes literature has suffered from several drawbacks: (i) it is radically slanted towards organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries, (ii) the literature on non-OECD countries does not use genuine welfare policy variables and (iii) social assistance and healthcare programmes are not utilized as components of welfare state effort and generosity. To overcome these limitations, we employ advanced data reduction methods, exploit an original dataset (https://glow.ku.edu.tr/) that we assembled from several international and domestic sources covering 52 emerging markets and OECD countries and present a welfare state regime structure as of the mid-2010s. Our analysis is based on genuine welfare policy variables that are theorized to capture welfare generosity and welfare efforts across five major policy domains: old-age pensions, sickness cash benefits, unemployment insurance, social assistance and healthcare. The sample of OECD countries and emerging market economies form four distinct welfare state regime clusters: institutional, neoliberal, populist and residual. We unveil the composition and performance of welfare state components in each welfare state regime family and develop politics-based working hypotheses about the formation of these regimes. Institutional welfare state regimes perform high in social security, healthcare and social assistance, while populist regimes perform moderately in social assistance and healthcare and moderate-to-high in social security. The neoliberal regime performs moderately in social assistance and healthcare, and it performs low in social security, and the residual regime performs low in all components. We then hypothesize that the relative political strengths of formal and informal working classes are key factors that shaped these welfare state regime typologies. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-01-08T09:26:32Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211050520
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Authors:Emanuele Ferragina, Federico Danilo Filetti First page: 148 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. We measure and interpret the evolution of labour market protection across 21 high-income countries over three decades, employing as conceptual foundations the ‘regime varieties’ and ‘trajectories of change’ developed by Esping-Andersen, Estevez-Abe, Hall and Soskice, and Thelen. We measure labour market protection considering four institutional dimensions – employment protection, unemployment protection, income maintenance and activation – and the evolution of the workforce composition. This measurement accounts for the joint evolution of labour market institutions, their complementarities and their relation to outcomes, and mitigate the unrealistic Average Production Worker assumption. We handle the multi-dimensional nature of labour market protection with Principal Component Analysis and capture the characteristics of countries’ trajectories of change with a composite score. We contribute to the literature in three ways. (1) We portray a revised typology that accounts for processes of change between 1990 and 2015, and that clusters regime varieties on the basis of coordination and solidarity levels, that is, Central/Northern European, Southern European, liberal. (2) We illustrate that, despite a persistent gap, a large majority of Coordinated Market Economies experiencing a decline in the level of labour market protection became more similar to Liberal Market Economies. (3) We develop a fivefold taxonomy of countries’ trajectories of change (liberalization, dualization, flexibility, de-dualization and higher protection), showing that these trajectories are not always path-dependent and consistent with regime varieties previously developed in the literature. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-01-11T09:22:28Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211056222
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Authors:Hannah Zagel, Wim Van Lancker First page: 166 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This study investigates whether generous family policies at the transition to parenthood reduce single and partnered mothers’ economic disadvantages later in the life course. Previous research usually focused on the immediate effects of family policies and disregards potential longer-term effects. In this study, we suggest taking a life-course perspective to study the relationships between family policy and mothers’ poverty risks. We empirically investigate how investment in child benefits, childcare services and parental leave measures at the transition to parenthood are associated with poverty outcomes at later life stages and whether these associations hold over time. We draw on pooled EU-SILC data, and an original policy dataset based on OECD expenditure data for child benefits, childcare and parental leave from 1994 to 2015. We find that mothers’ observed increase in poverty over time is slower in countries with high levels of spending for childcare at the transition to parenthood than in lower spending countries. The gap between partnered and single mothers was also diminishing in contexts of high childcare expenditure. For the other two policies, we did not find these links. These results do lend support to the claim that childcare is a prime example of a social investment policy with returns later in the life course and represents a life-course policy that seems to be able to disrupt economic path dependencies. The results for the other two policies suggest, however, a limited potential of family policy spending at transition to parenthood to reduce the poverty gap between partnered and single mothers over the course of life. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-01-08T02:08:40Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211035690
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Authors:Kristina Goldacker, Janna Wilhelm, Susanne Wirag, Pia Dahl, Tanja Riotte, Pia S Schober First page: 197 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This study investigates how parental leave policies and uptake may impact heterosexual couples’ relationship satisfaction. It focuses on Germany as an example of a country with a history of familialist policies and long maternal leaves that has recently undergone a significant policy shift. We extend the literature by examining the effects of maternal and paternal leave duration on both partners’ relationship satisfaction while distinguishing between the length of solo, joint and overall leave. The study applies two different methods on data from the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam). First, the study applies fixed-effects regression models (n = 1046 couples) to investigate the impact of parental leave duration on the change in mothers’ and fathers’ satisfaction over the child’s early years. Second, drawing on exogenous variation as a result of the parental leave reform of 2007, which shortened paid leave for mothers and incentivised fathers’ leave take-up, difference-in-difference analyses (n = 1403 couples) analyse reform effects on relationship satisfaction of parents with 3-year-old children. The fixed-effects models indicated a consistent negative impact of maternal – especially solo – leave duration on both mothers’ and fathers’ relationship satisfaction. No significant effects of paternal leave length were found. The difference-in-difference approach revealed a positive reform effect on mothers’ relationship satisfaction. In combination, these results suggest that the reduction in maternal leave as part of the reform has had a greater impact on couples’ relationship quality than the relatively short duration of leave taken by most fathers after the introduction of the individual leave entitlement. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-01-13T01:38:13Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211056187
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Authors:Romana Careja, Eloisa Harris First page: 212 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. The term ‘welfare chauvinism’ has achieved a certain currency in social science research and is used widely. Yet, the concept is not without its critics, who claim that welfare chauvinism is ‘loaded’ or ‘ambiguous’. This article reviews empirical studies of welfare chauvinism, from the 1990s to the present day, drawing primarily from party politics and attitudes research. We identify differences in how the concept is used, defined, operationalized and measured. We emphasize the importance of a unified language, operationalization and measurement, and identify promising directions for future research. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-03-02T03:02:01Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211068796
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Authors:Ursula Dallinger First page: 225 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. Increased income inequality, and policies that can limit its further growth, are an important issue for citizens, politicians and the media. Numerous empirical studies have measured political support for redistributive policies by asking whether the government should equalize gaps between rich and poor. They try to discover whether ‘redistributive’ policies are supported by public opinion and are therefore politically feasible. This research note argues that the standard instrument measures diffuse support for more equality, but gives rather vague hints if this support is transformed into a political mandate for redistributive programmes. With regard to the way in which the political demand for state redistribution to reduce income inequality has been raised so far, methodological critique and innovation is largely lacking. This article therefore tests the validity of the standard item. It argues that the conventional measurement only captures a general ‘inclination’ towards the idea of equality. However, since the item phrasing is unspecific, other orientations confound the answers, so that ultimately the predictive power in terms of political behaviour is low. The standard item measures egalitarian preferences with inconsistence. This limits its reliability, so that hardly any conclusions can be drawn regarding voting for left parties or support for redistributive programmes. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2022-01-19T12:43:31Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211066469
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Authors:David Weisstanner, Klaus Armingeon First page: 135 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. An emerging consensus claims that ‘subjective’ (mis)perceptions of income inequality better explain redistributive preferences than actual ‘objective’ conditions. In this article, we critically re-assess this view. We compare perceived and actual income positions as predictors for preferences for redistribution. We argue that perceived income is partly endogenous to actual income and its effect on preferences conditional on ideology. Using an original survey experiment from Switzerland, we show that the predictive power of perceived income is lower compared to actual income. Perceived income is only associated with redistribution preferences among centre-right respondents, but not among left-wing respondents. Furthermore, providing respondents with corrective information about their true position in the income hierarchy has no effect on redistribution preferences. These findings go against the new consensus about the superior explanatory power of subjective perceptions of income inequality. We argue instead that absolute objective conditions should be at the centre of explaining redistributive preferences. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2021-12-23T01:31:27Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211037912
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Authors:Mareike Bünning, Lena Hipp First page: 182 Abstract: Journal of European Social Policy, Ahead of Print. This study examines how public policies affect parents’ preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers’ and fathers’ work–family preferences: the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare; the right to return to a full-time job after having reduced hours to part-time and an increase in the number of ‘partner months’ in parental leave schemes. Analysing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany from 2015 (N = 1756), we find that fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Full-time working parents, moreover, are found to prefer fewer hours independent of the policy setting, while non-employed parents would like to work at least some hours. Last but not least, our analyses show that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers’ preferences for longer and mothers’ preferences for shorter leave. Increasing the number of partner months in parental schemes hence has the greatest potential to increase gender equality. Citation: Journal of European Social Policy PubDate: 2021-11-17T01:03:45Z DOI: 10.1177/09589287211035701
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