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Whether welfare provision should be broad-based or selectively targeted at the poor is one of the most common themes in social policy discourse. However, empirical evidence concerning people's preferences about these distributive justice principles is very limited. The current paper aims to bridge this gap, by analyzing Europeans' opinions about a hypothetical transformation of the welfare state that would provide social transfers and services only to people on low incomes.

The analysis draws on data from the 2016 European Social Survey and covers 21 countries. In order to understand what would motivate people to support the complete means testing of welfare provision, we use multilevel models with individual-level and contextual predictors.

The results show that the upper and middle classes are the most opposed to the idea, presumably as they would be the net losers from such a reform. Furthermore, our results indicate that more-egalitarian people show a higher level of support for means testing, even though the political left has traditionally promoted universalism. Some key characteristics of the welfare state also matter: People are more likely to endorse complete means testing in countries with less-generous provision and a higher incidence of poverty. However, the extent to which the existing welfare state relies on means testing has no influence on people's opinions about implementing a fully means-tested welfare model.

Some of the key findings are likely to be of interest to activists advocating on behalf of the poor and the socially vulnerable. Although it is generally assumed that universal provision is the best strategy to address the needs of disadvantaged people, our results suggest that from an electoral point of view, targeting within universalism may be a more appealing welfare strategy.

This paper details one of the very few studies to examine preferences for means-tested welfare provision in a comparative context. In addition, one of the contextual variables used in the analysis – the proportion of means-tested social benefits out of the total expenditure on social benefits – is unique to this study.

This article estimates the causal effect of benefit levels on elderly enrollment in two public assistance programs by using the variation in eligibility and benefit levels introduced by old-age pension benefits. The findings are threefold. First, the low take-up among the elderly is not driven by changes in the composition of the eligible pool. Second, old-age pensions decrease the use of public assistance programs by decreasing the gain of participation – the potential benefits. Third, we find program-specific responses: a $100 increase in potential Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits leads to a 4–6 percentage point increase in the take-up probability, but we are unable to estimate consistent results for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Together with the fact that eligible individuals who begin receiving old-age pensions continue to participate in SSI more often than they maintain SNAP enrollment, the different program response could be due to preference for cash over in-kind transfers.

Many countries around the world are facing great challenges from their ageing population with shrinking workforce, this will put more pressure on their financial system and will increase the public spending on care costs provided to older people. Egypt is in the phase of establishing a new law for older people care's rights, a law that will organise how older people in need for care would benefit from access to government financial support and how will families support their older relatives financially and how the care costs will be shared between the older people, their families and the government.

The paper examines the suitability two cost-sharing methods and applying them to assess the effect on the individuals and families' income strain.

The preferred approach can be used for sharing costs as it applies a gradual funding withdrawal by the government and provide more fairness and flexibility for application in different regions. Besides, the parameters of this approach can be used by policy makers to control the levels of funding.

The paper will be the first to discuss the intergenerational fairness from a financial perspective in Egypt to avoid forcing older people into poverty or resorting to poverty trade-off.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the main elements of the existing framework of the UK welfare benefit system and the key changes that will be implemented under the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and its socio‐economic effects.

This paper outlines the structure of the key welfare benefits likely to be encountered by those with a neurological disability, the broad qualifying criteria and the interaction between various types of benefit. By comparison, it examines the elements of key significance that will take effect under Welfare Reform and the resulting impact on the various demographics of benefit claimants.

Since the merging of the UK's social security system with unemployment services, welfare legislation has seen countless changes, although the core underlying principles have remained largely the same along the way. The Government has committed to overhauling a complex benefit regime whilst counterbalancing the task of addressing the issues of budget deficit. In principle, the Government aims to deliver a more streamlined, cost‐effective benefit system, which will focus the greatest attention on the most vulnerable elements of our society. The most detrimental affect will be on unemployed, working‐age families; those that are perceived to have a greater advantage in the labour market.

The objective of this paper to raise awareness amongst professionals as to the benefits available to their clients to improve their financial and social position and to go some way to prepare for the potential impact of Welfare Reform.

As unemployment rises across the European Union (EU), it is important to understand the extent to which the incomes of the new unemployed are protected by tax–benefit systems and to assess the cost pressures on the social protection systems of this increase in unemployment. This chapter uses the EU tax–benefit model EUROMOD to explore these issues, comparing effects in five EU countries. It provides evidence on the differing degrees of resilience of the household incomes of the newly unemployed due to the variations in the protection offered by the tax–benefit systems, according to whether unemployment benefit is payable, the household situation of the unemployed person and across countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between social policy and late-life happiness by analyzing the impact of the basic old-age pension on the happiness of older people in South Korea.

People aged 65 and over selected from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing are analyzed in the study.

It shows that the association between the basic old-age pension and the happiness of older people is negative. This may be attributable to the frugality of the benefits and the side effects of the means test.

This implies that the relationship between social policy and late-life happiness is not linear but it is affected by the context of the policy. It suggests that changing the fundamental benefit system to be more progressive can be a more useful policy option to realize the initial policy goal for recipients.

In many countries, individuals can receive welfare support whilst simultaneously being employed. The level of earned income that welfare recipients are allowed to keep has long been a subject of debate. Core issues include whether in-work benefit regulations provide incentives for individuals to expand labour market participation and are thus also socially effective and whether the population perceives welfare benefits for individuals who earn own income as fair. This article contributes to the debate about the social legitimacy of in-work benefit regulations by shedding light on the principles guiding judgements about an adequate amount of in-work benefit receipt.

The authors use a factorial survey experiment to investigate which factors guide judgements about an adequate level of in-work benefit receipt. In the authors' factorial survey, the household composition, health status, and monthly earnings of a hypothetical in-work benefit recipient were varied experimentally. The study investigates Germany's basic income support programme, a means-tested social policy programme that targets both unemployed and employed individuals.

The results show that respondents consider higher earnings retention rates for lower-income earners to be fair. This preference mirrors the German legislation, which is based on the principle of need. Furthermore, the presence of children and of physical as well as mental health impairments are associated with support for higher earnings retention rates.

The findings suggest that citizens support the core features of in-work benefit regulations but do not consider in-work benefit recipients as a homogenous group when assessing the adequate level of benefit receipt.

In the social policy literature, it is often assumed that universal policies are more popular than selective ones among the public, because they supposedly generate broader self-interested coalitions and are considered morally superior. The present article revisits and challenges this assumption.

The article critically reviews the existing empirical literature on public support for universal and means-tested welfare schemes.

The main conclusion is that the popularity of universal vis-à-vis selective welfare remains very much an open question. First, the studies that are typically cited to support the claim that universalism is indeed more popular are inconclusive because they conflate the institutional design of welfare programs with their respective target groups. Second, there is considerable variation in public support for universal and selective welfare across countries, time and policy domains.

The findings suggest that future research should focus on scrutinizing under which circumstances – when, where and why – universal social policies are more popular than selective ones.

The article makes an original case for considering perceived welfare deservingness of social policies' target groups alongside the policy design when studying popular support for differently targeted welfare schemes.

The United States adopted a new welfare regime in 1996. The centerpiece of this legislation is a notion of personal responsibility that redefines the relation between individuals and the state. I use this law as a foil to outline a new paradigm of legal research. We must understand welfare, I argue, as part of a self-referential legal system. Law is legitimated by particular kinds of fair, democratic political agreement. When material inequalities undermine political participation, however, the law must insure the bases of its own legitimacy through welfare. Welfare law is thus vital to a nation’s legal system as a whole. Seen from this perspective, the current American welfare system fails to fulfill the basic presuppositions of legal legitimacy.

The present article deals with the topic of migrants’ exclusion from welfare benefits in European host countries from the angle of the research on the so-called “welfare chauvinism” (Andersen and Bjørklund 1990, p. 212). More specifically, it explores the political justifications behind welfare chauvinism in the policy debate surrounding some recent chauvinist-oriented social policies. Drawing on that, the article develops a theoretical argument to generate expectations about how politicians use different types of justifications. The fundamental proposition is that the chauvinistic arguments used are shaped by the different types of social programs, i.e. either universal or means-tested programs.

Qualitative content analysis of several selected parliamentary debates in the period 2017–2019 in Austria is carried out. In order to improve the efficiency of the research, the author relies on MAXQDA, an advanced piece of software for qualitative data analysis, to code the qualitative data and analyze them. The author prefers this to other similar programs as it is considered a valid and reliable tool within the academic research world.

The article points out that programs design works as an explanatory factor to highlight variations of welfare chauvinist arguments.

It develops for the first time a theoretical argument explaining the presence and variation of welfare chauvinist arguments based on social programs design.