Going with the Flow? The Effect of Economic Fluctuation on People’s Solidarity with Unemployed People

Wilfred Uunk () and Wim Oorschot
Additional contact information
Wilfred Uunk: Otto-Friedrich-Universität
Wim Oorschot: KU Leuven

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2019, vol. 143, issue 3, No 10, 1129-1146

Abstract: Abstract Rising levels of unemployment in European welfare states have revived questions on the social protection of the unemployed and the people’s solidarity with this claimant group. Does people’s solidarity with the unemployed—in terms of the welfare benefits they would grant this group—decrease when the economy fares ill and unemployment is on the rise, or does solidarity increase as many more people are at risk of losing their jobs? And, do changes in economic conditions and unemployment affect the solidarity of all social groups alike, or are there differences with people’s socio-economic position? In this study, we address these questions using repeated cross-section data from the Netherlands in the period 1975–2010. Our multilevel analyses show that in times of higher unemployment people’s solidarity with the unemployed is higher, while independently from that, in times of economic downturn solidarity is lower. These macro-level effects vary only little across social groups, yet we do find that the unemployment rate affects people’s solidarity more positively during economic good times. This indicates that people’s solidarity with the unemployed depends, among others, on the specific macro-economic constellation of economic welfare and unemployment.

Keywords: Welfare attitudes; Economic fluctuation; Unemployment; Solidarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-018-2023-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:143:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-018-2023-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-018-2023-z

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().