Public demand for social investment: new supporting coalitions for welfare state reform in Western Europe?

Social investment has recently received much attention among policy-makers and welfare state scholars, but the existing literature remains focused on policy-making on the macro level. We expand this perspective by studying public opinion towards social investment compared to other welfare policies, exploiting new public opinion data from eight European countries. We identify three latent dimensions of welfare state preferences: ‘social investment’; ‘passive transfers’; and ‘workfare’ policies. We find that social investment is far more popular compared to the other two. Furthermore, we identify distinct supporting groups: passive transfer policies are most supported by low-income, low-educated people, by individuals leaning towards traditional social values and by those subscribing to left-wing economic attitudes. Social investment policies are supported by a broad coalition of individuals with higher educational backgrounds and left-libertarian views from all economic strata. Workfare policies are most popular with high-income individuals and those subscribing to economically conservative and traditional authoritarian values.

近年来，社会投资（social investment）在政策制定者与福利国家研究学者中广受关注，但现有文献仍多聚焦于宏观层面的政策制定。本研究通过对比公众对社会投资与其他福利政策的态度，并利用来自八个欧洲国家的全新民调数据，拓展了该领域的研究视角。本研究识别出公众福利国家偏好的三个潜在维度：“社会投资”、“被动型转移支付（passive transfers）”以及“工作福利制（workfare）”政策。研究发现，相较其余两类政策，社会投资的公众支持度显著更高。此外，本研究还识别出各具特征的支持群体：被动型转移支付政策的核心支持者为低收入、低学历群体，持有传统社会价值观的个体，以及认同左翼经济立场的人群；社会投资政策的支持群体更为广泛，涵盖各经济阶层中拥有高等教育背景且持有左翼自由意志主义（left-libertarian）观点的个体；工作福利制政策则最受高收入群体，以及认同经济保守主义与传统威权价值观的人群青睐。