Replication Data for: Public Opinion on Welfare State Recalibration inTimes of Austerity: Evidence from Survey Experiments

Even though social investment is highly popular, welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. When resources are scarce in austere times, welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences towards individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture citizens' overall social policy priorities. Using two novel survey experiments in three European countries, we show that citizens have clear social policy priorities: pensions and education enjoy a high, family policies a medium, and labor market policies a low priority. However, policy constituencies differ in their relative priorities. Our findings suggest that welfare state recalibration is difficult because trade-offs are unpopular, and distributive conflicts in mature welfare states are mainly about distributing resources to specific social groups.

尽管社会投资（social investment）广受推崇，但福利国家（welfare state）的调整重塑仍举步维艰。在紧缩时期资源匮乏的情况下，福利国家的调整重塑会涉及多维度的权衡取舍。既有研究多聚焦于单一政策偏好或特定政策领域内的权衡，未能捕捉民众对于社会政策的整体优先级考量。本研究通过在三个欧洲国家开展的两项新颖调查实验发现，民众拥有明确的社会政策优先级排序：养老金与教育领域优先级最高，家庭政策次之，劳动力市场政策优先级最低。不过，不同政策拥护群体的相对优先级存在差异。本研究结果表明，福利国家调整重塑之所以困难，一方面是因为权衡取舍举措不受民众欢迎，另一方面则是成熟福利国家中的分配冲突主要围绕向特定社会群体分配资源展开。