Dynamic Cleavages of ‘Welfare Rights and Duties’ in Public Attitude Towards Old-age Pensions.

Ahn, Sang-Hoon; Kim, Soo-Wan

This study investigated public attitudes towards pension spending in welfare states. By utilising a dataset covering 21 different Western European countries and conducting a multi-level analyses, three main findings resulted. First, as the welfare status model suggests, the status of welfare duties as well as the status of welfare rights proved to play a key role in shaping the political cleavages over public pensions at both macro- and micro-levels. Second, age and gender also seem to be significant sources of cleavage in addition to class-related variables. Finally, the study examined empirically the interaction effect of age and class-related factors to reveal that class-based interests offset generational interests.

WESTERN Europe; PUBLIC welfare; PENSIONS -- Social aspects; SOCIAL & economic rights; COMPARATIVE studies

European Societies, 2014, Vol 16, Issue 1, p90

1461-6696

Academic Journal

10.1080/14616696.2012.748928