Author: Martin Mehl
Abstract
Who supports European Social Policies? This paper critically evaluates the public attitude of establishing a European Union-wide social benefit scheme. The first part centers around the analysis of the 2016 European Social Survey (ESS), which includes the question for supportiveness for a European welfare mechanism. This mechanism is set out to guarantee a minimum standard of living in the EU financed by transfer payments of its Member States. The second part then combines these findings with mi- crosimulations of EU-SILC data to estimate financial requisites for implementing such a scheme. I identify the financially most vulnerable households within the EU as well as countries becoming net contributor or net recipient under such a European welfare mechanism. This paper provides nuanced insights into the complex interplay between individual household characteristics, their support for a EU-wide social benefit scheme, their expectations of national contributions, and the actual national contributions of the household’s home country. I test this model empirically by applying multiple re- gressions that show living in a net contributor nation comes with (1) a weaker support for European transfers and (2) the expectation that a European welfare state would lead to a lower social benefit level in their home country. Individual household charac- teristics such as income, gender, age, marital status, having children, life satisfaction, and economical satisfaction as well as education go as expected. Therefore, this study investigates public perceptions surrounding a common European welfare state. By examining both survey data and microsimulations, we offer nuanced insights into in- dividual and national factors influencing support for such a policy, providing valuable perspectives for the understanding of public sentiment in the European context