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Positive and negative views of social security
Fascinating blog post by Ben Baumberg, Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR) at the University of Kent, looking at some recent research examining public attitudes towards social security across Europe.
Here’s a few extracts (with my emphasis):
As we saw last week, there’s a quite consistent divide between stable support for talking about the ‘welfare state’, and more negative attitudes for some aspects of ‘benefits’ (particularly around unemployment benefits).
What I really wanted to draw attention to, though, was how such attitudes vary across Europe. You might expect that in more generous welfare states, people have much more positive views and therefore believe there are fewer negative consequences – but in general, if you were to think this, then you would be wrong.
Taking in everything in this picture is tricky, but there’s two things to draw out of this.
Firstly, in general it is not true that countries where people think there are more positive consequences also think there are fewer negative consequences. If anything, they both go together – particularly for some particular dimensions of this (e.g. countries where people say social benefits help prevent poverty are also those where they say that they stop people helping one another). Likewise at the individual level, people who see more negative consequences of the welfare state are not necessarily those who see fewer positive consequences.
What’s really interesting here is that countries that spend more money on social benefits perceive MORE negative consequences of the welfare state – but substantially more positive consequences too.
For me, this suggests that trying to combat negative perceptions of benefits is not the best way of trying to get support for higher spending; rather, the aim is to focus on what social benefits can achieve when they’re done well.
Secondly, it’s striking how much of an outlier the UK is. In general, we see social benefits as having more negative net consequences than any countries bar Hungary and Slovakia – and we see the highest level of negative moral consequences out of any of the ESS countries.
* 66% of Britons agree that “social benefits/services make people lazy” – compared to 37% in Norway, and only 18% in Greece.
* 49% think “Social benefits/services make people less willing care for one another”, which ties us with France, but is almost double the level in Sweden.
In other words, the UK is not just more negative overall than most other countries, but the way in which it is negative is also different – we still perceive a reasonable level of positive consequences (except when it comes to ‘lead(s) to a more equal society’), but perceive an incredibly high level of negative consequences, particularly moral ones.
For the whole article, see The positive and negative consequences of the welfare state
Ben Baumberg also has an interesting piece on Prof. Paul Gregg’s speech at a Leeds event last month:
http://inequalitiesblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/paul-gregg-disability-employment-speech/
I seem to remember Prof. Gregg was one of the original advisers to ‘New’ Labour on the introduction of the WCA/ESA policy. He now says (and who could argue?) that the present WCA is a subversion of its original, pioneering aims. Unlike many politicians blinkered by sub-agendas, Prof Gregg appears to inhabit the real world and quite rightly highlights the need for employment retention support of the sort that prevents people with health problems falling out of employment in the first place. This is one of the most glaring gaps in current welfare provision and should be a no brainer for any sensible policy maker - except of course - it is mostly absent. Try asking your local employment support provider if they offer retention services. The reality is that there is no money in it for them. They are contracted to get people back into work and are rewarded on that basis. Yes, that clanking noise really is the ESA stable door being locked by the inept politicians.
The rest of Ben’s article is also very interesting and well worth a read. As a country I suppose we can carry on regurgitating the same old divisive welfare arguments that have been trotted out over the last few hundred years (likely) or we could start again (unlikely) and develop truly innovative and holistic policies that actually worked and saved us all money too.
[ Edited: 25 Oct 2012 at 09:28 pm by Stevegale ]Ben is probably an expert…
To my way of thinking we have high levels of positive and negative approval simply because as a nation we are unable to have a serious debate about taxes and welfare.
Which is one reason why we have evolved a tax and welfare system, which involves continual announcemnts about giveaways ..... along with a heap of stealth taxes and stealth benefit cuts….
The hard fact is, that for most folk for every pound gained, you are probably losing a pound elsewhere.
No wonder I am confused…..
I might even start beleiving Bens nonsense.