How Europeans Combine Support for Social Rights and Work Obligations of the Unemployed: Effects of Individual Predictors and Institutional Design

Federica Rossetti () and Bart Meuleman ()
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Federica Rossetti: KU Leuven
Bart Meuleman: KU Leuven

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2023, vol. 170, issue 2, No 7, 485-505

Abstract: Abstract A long tradition of welfare attitudes research acknowledges that a substantial share of European citizens are supportive of organising social protection against unemployment, but less attention is given to how this support relates to support for the work obligations that characterise contemporary demanding activation policies. Using data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (2016), we investigate how individuals combine support for welfare rights and work obligations of the unemployed. Subsequently, we analyse whether the choice for a particular combination of rights and obligations is determined by individual characteristics and characteristics of a country’s welfare system. We find that high support for welfare rights does not necessarily imply opposition against work obligations, and that a relevant group of citizens supports generous benefits and harsh sanctions at the same time. Preferences for combinations of rights and obligations are mainly driven by ideological values, and partly by self-interest variables. At the country level, we find a link between citizens’ preferences and generosity of unemployment benefits. In highly generous institutional settings, individuals are less likely to want harsh sanctions combined with relatively high support for welfare rights, but are more in favour of moderate punishment for noncompliant unemployed combined with support for welfare rights.

Keywords: Activation policies; Public opinion; Latent class analysis; Multilevel modeling; European social survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-023-03186-7

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