Responsibility for Child and Elderly Care: Who Should Cover the Costs? A Comparison of Baltic and Nordic Countries

Abstract

Baltic and Nordic countries share historical and political connections as well as geographical proximity. Nevertheless, when their welfare regimes are compared, Baltic countries can be included in a post‐communist model that differs from the social‐democratic model of Nordic countries in many respects. This article focuses on one of these aspects, the opinion expressed towards the financial responsibility for the care of children and the elderly. In particular, childcare policies have been used to explain the development of a dual earner/dual career model in Nordic countries. Nevertheless, full‐time employment of women is widespread in Baltic countries too, although family policies and attitudes strongly differ from Nordic ones. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme (2012), we compare public attitudes towards who should cover the costs of caring in five Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark) and two Baltic ones (Latvia and Lithuania). We find remarkable differences between both groups of nations: citizens from Baltic countries consider the role of the family more important than their counterparts in Nordic countries. Results show Latvians holding the most familistic views in terms of covering costs, and Swedish people the least. Individual socio‐demographic variables are less important than national contexts in explaining these attitudes. We find important variations among the social‐democratic countries and, surprisingly, in the case of childcare, Sweden shows higher differences to Denmark than to Latvia and Lithuania. This finding suggests that the social‐democratic bloc in this respect is more heterogeneous than what is generally thought.

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