Sang-Hoon Ahn | College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University
Soo-Wan Kim | College of Social Welfare, Kangnam University
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.
Key words: public attitudes; pension; welfare status model; generational
cleavage; class cleavage; gender cleavage; multilevel analysis
European Societies (2014), 16:1, 90-111, DOI: 10.1080/14616696.2012.748928