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The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical analysis of factors that affect support networks among retirees in 13 countries.

It examines two propositions drawing from support network theory and the classification of countries by welfare systems. It uses fixed‐effect causal models to examine how retirement and socio‐demographic variables influence kinship and friendship support networks. Data are drawn from the Social Relations and Support Systems module of the International Social Survey Programme 2001.

The results show that retirees' friendship‐based support networks are almost one‐third smaller than those of working persons. Furthermore, this difference is greater in welfare systems that spend more on social well‐being.

However, the relationship between informal support networks and welfare systems is complex, which indicates a need to further the debate on the co‐existence of formal and informal aid systems.

This study's main sociological confirmation is that the relationship between the size of support networks and the type of welfare system is irregular and complex. The results make a significant contribution to the debate on the relationship between formal and informal care among a group of people during a critical life‐cycle phase, such as retirement.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the effects of interpersonal and institutional trust on welfare state support in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU).

The authors use micro-data from two rounds of a multinational survey conducted in these countries in 2010 and 2016. The outcome variable of interest is the willingness to pay more taxes to support the welfare state. The authors define the welfare state broadly, and focus on support for three main domains of the welfare state, namely, support for the needy, public healthcare and public education. Binomial regression is used to establish influence of interpersonal and institutional trust on welfare state support.

The authors find that both interpersonal and institutional trust have positive influences on strengthening support for the welfare state against a number of alternative explanations for public support for the welfare state. These positive effects remain the same for all three domains under investigation, namely, helping the needy, public healthcare and public education. Furthermore, these positive effects were observed both in the relatively less developed countries of the FSU and in the more developed Eastern European countries. Moreover, the positive effects of interpersonal and institutional trust on support for the needy, public healthcare and public education were found to grow over time.

The findings indicate that the benefits of nurturing social capital will likely be substantial. Decision-makers, politicians, welfare state administrators and multinational founders (e.g. the UN and World Bank) should acknowledge the role played by trust in influencing the citizenry’s support for the allocation of financial resources toward the development and maintenance of the welfare state. The findings imply that welfare state reforms could prove be more effective within a social context where levels of trust are high. Thus, special attention should be paid to initiatives aimed at developing strategies to build trust.

Social welfare reforms in post-communist transitional countries may fail without active strategies aimed at nurturing institutional trust. One way to nurture institutional trust is through making additional efforts at enhancing the levels of accountability and transparency within a society as well as through increasing citizen engagement. Another way to build increased levels of trust is to take part in a variety of initiatives in good governance put forth by multinational initiatives.

As far as the authors know, this is the first paper which studies effect of interpersonal and institutional trust on support of the welfare state using a large and diverse sample of 27 countries over the period of five years. This is the first study which focuses on post-communist countries where trust is inherently low.

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 paper presents a study on whether citizens’ immigration attitudes shape their attitudes towards social welfare in three Nordic countries.

The main analysis was performed using linear regression analysis. Data were retrieved from the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016). The data cover the Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish respondents (N = 5,021).

The analyses indicate that citizens’ immigration attitudes are associated with their social welfare attitudes. The more positive the attitudes towards immigration are, the more positive the attitudes toward social welfare will be. Further, people in the political Left have more positive attitudes towards social welfare compared to those in the political Right; but, the immigration issue is more divisive of the political Left’s opinion than that of the Right.

Public opinion research has its limitations because behind an individual’s opinion there are many hidden factors. An individual may also have different opinions depending on the dimensions of the welfare state.

If the immigration issue reduces the support for social welfare among the political Left, it may reduce the legitimacy of the Nordic social policy because the support of the political Left has traditionally been in favour of the universal principles of the welfare state.

The association of the immigration issue and social welfare attitudes has been broadly studied; but, the interaction of the immigration issue and political opinion on social welfare attitudes is less studied.

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 paper takes an ideal type of different welfare regimes as a starting point. It investigates with survey data people's experiences and expectations towards the welfare state and its functioning against various social risks. The paper discusses questions like, are there differences in perceptions between welfare regimes? And what is the role of the welfare state regime in explaining those differences?

This research article is based on OECD survey data and classical welfare state classifications. The analysis of welfare regimes provides both a theoretical and methodological structure for study. The study-applied analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) to test a hypothesis that regimes matter analyses more nuanced aspects of current and prospects to the near future welfare state provision.

This examination suggests that welfare regimes still matter even though the differences in averages were not as immense as expected. Perceptions in different welfare regimes also have priorities related to the willingness to pay more taxes in order to receive better access to services and financial support if needed. In Nordic countries, the acute priority based on survey data is investment in education and re-training. In Continental Europe, more financial support is needed for pensions. Overall, respondents representing emerging Eastern European and Mediterranean welfare regimes think that welfare provision should be financed more compared to other welfare regime respondents. Health is a universal and unifying issue, particularly in ageing welfare states, and brings health as a traditional and central question again.

Respondents' perceptions work as people's voice and assessments are used to gain a contemporary understanding of welfare and about welfare state functioning.

With the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government reaching its mid-term point, this paper examines its austerity measures and public expenditure reductions in family support and children's services, and its revisions of family support, family intervention, child poverty, child well-being and children's services reform policies in contrast to the former Labour governments.

The paper is informed by policy analysis and research reviews.

The analysis focuses on three dimensions of policy change: first, reductions in income support for children and families and central government funding for children's services; second, refocusing child poverty, child well-being and family policies around the Conservative's “Broken Britain” campaign and the Liberal Democrats targeted social mobility initiatives; and finally, broader children's services reforms. The paper recognises some progressive developments but charts the social welfare implications of reduced welfare entitlements for families and the pressures on support services for families from children's services reforms.

The paper combines reflections on the aims, achievements and limitations of Labour reforms to family support and children's services with a broader analysis of welfare state retrenchment and restructuring under the Coalition. It places current changes in family support and children's services within the context of the ideological influences on the Coalition's social policies and the primacy of its austerity programme and welfare state reform agendas.

These reforms offer a vision of a fairer welfare system where truly no one is written off, where nearly everyone is preparing or looking for work, where everyone is treated as an individual and gets the support they need. More importantly, these reforms point the way to a fairer society where children don't grow up in poverty, where disabled people enjoy real equality, and everyone is given real help to overcome the barriers to achieving their full potential. (DWP, 2008, p. 8)Workfare has finally arrived in the UK, but not with trumpet blasts of outrage: it's been smuggled in with lofty rhetoric about ‘personalisation’, ‘individually tailored’ advice and support which will enable people to ‘take control of their journey to work'. (Bunting, 2009)

The Indonesian healthcare system has been reformed in tune with economic and political changes. The reform was pursued by encouraging growing reliance on individual contributions. Consolidating citizens' support has become increasingly important for the long-term sustainability of the programme. This study explores individual views and experiences in negotiating solutions for health security under the situation where pre-industrial modes of informal network remain intact, while private healthcare continues to be in demand by population segments targeted by the system.

Individual attitudes toward the current healthcare system were explored using online interviews (N = 75) in the cities of Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The qualitative exploratory approach resorted to personal views on the importance of the state, family and market in health risk management. Perceptions on who should be responsible for healthcare, and the political legitimacy of the welfare-state approach to healthcare were also observed. A thematic coding strategy was used for the data analysis.

Those interviewed value and support the formal system (either state and market), yet place reliance on informal support (family and relatives). Intertwining views of religious teaching, filial piety, moral obligation were the most common reasons for individuals to support such dual welfare systems. The findings reflect the common attitudes toward welfare in the context of changing realities of individualised society at the early stage.

This article represents a valuable contribution at the empirical level because it provides an assessment of individuals' attitudes toward Indonesia's recent health arrangements. Such individuals are those belonging to the targeted population of the contributory system. This study also offers an alternative framework for understanding the nature of the healthcare regime generated from the perspectives of individuals.

This article aims to explore whether and how economic, political and demographic municipal conditions shape citizens' attitudes regarding decentralised social policies.

The authors analysed the 2018 wave of the Dutch Local Election Studies, which includes a novel survey item asking respondents whether they prefer local social policies to be primarily: (1) protection-based, (2) cohesion-building or (3) activation-based. The authors appended context indicators to that survey and performed multilevel logistic regression analyses (1,913 respondents nested in 336 municipalities).

At the individual level, these preferences are affected by gender, age, income, education and political inclination, as expected. However, preferences towards local social policies are not shaped by local economic, demographic or political conditions. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research.

By using unique data, including a newly developed survey item, this study is the first to explore whether and how municipal conditions shape preferences regarding local welfare. Understanding those preferences is increasingly important as many Western European countries have decentralised swathes of social policies from the national to the local level in recent decades.