ABSTRACT

Why would people favour government support for childcare services for working parents? We examine whether five hypotheses explaining individuals’ attitudes toward the welfare state are applicable in a context of childcare policies. We apply multilevel analysis on the ESS 2008 data, including individual and country-level variables. On the individual level, both self-interest and ideology have limited influence on support for childcare policies. Support for these policies does not differ much between countries, but we manage to account for two thirds of the differences that are there. We find evidence for institutional effects (childcare hours), public interest (female employment and part-time work) and cultural variables (Protestantism and seeing provision as government responsibility). The results suggest that a distinction between Calvinism and Lutheranism may be useful when studying the relation between Protestantism and the welfare state. Finally, making country clusters on childcare, we conclude that existing care regime typologies do not fit the recent data.

Keywords: legitimacy, childcare, welfare state, public opinion, social care Typologies

INTRODUCTION

What explains why certain individuals favour specific welfare policies? Many social science scholars have asked this question. Traditionally, people's attitudes vis-a-vis particular policies are explained by whether they can profit from them, and by their political and religious beliefs. More recently, studies also examined whether existing policies, socio-economic or cultural realities in a country could influence individuals’ attitudes toward those policies. Most of these earlier studies, however, focused on opinions toward traditional social protection measures, while social services such as childcare were less highlighted. Therefore, we investigate which individual characteristics and national social realities and social policies affect the attitudes of individuals toward government support for childcare services for working parents. We use 2008 European Social Survey (ESS) data to examine whether five theories used to explain opinions toward welfare states are applicable to childcare for working parents as well. Step by step, we evaluate these theories related to individual and contextual characteristics in separate models, to finally test them in a few multilevel models.