What, where, and how: drivers of welfare attitudes toward work-family reconciliation policies in South European societies

Abstract

With increasing female labour market participation, welfare states in Europe have aimed to reorient their policies to face a newly emerging social risk -difficulties to combine work and family roles. Yet, they differ in the extent of this adaptation, which has been associated with multiple factors including the influence of cultural values or ideas towards care. In this article, we employ the European Social Survey (Round 8) to examine whether and how not only self-interests but also values influence public willingness to pay for extending state's work-family reconciliation policies in Italy, Portugal and Spain, where care provision traditionally was in the family. Although South European welfare states are often considered to be similarly influenced by traditional gender and family values, the findings of this study contribute to the evidence that there are important differences between them.

(Un)doing gender in female breadwinner households: Gender relations and structural change

“…Spain's welfare regime has often been characterized, alongside those of other Southern European countries, as familialist in its reliance on informal care provided by the family, and marked by high gender inequalities in the labor market and the domestic sphere (Bettio & Plantenga, 2004; Ferrera, 1996). However, several voices have argued for a need to nuance and complexify this picture, considering the social and institutional changes that have occurred in Spain over the last 3 decades and the growing heterogeneity within the Southern European group (Doblytė & Tejero, 2021; León & Migliavacca, 2013; Naldini & Jurado, 2013).…”

Class or individual habitus? Willingness to spend more on reconciliation policies in Europe

“…We hypothesise that the family is perceived as the “adequate” care provider more so in the first than in the fourth care regime. Embracing self-transcendence values, then, “might result in support for policies of family income protection but not necessarily for public care services” (Doblytė and Tejero, 2021, p. 16). Whilst maternal employment is low in both regimes, the proportion of children using informal childcare provided by the extended family in the first regime doubles the proportion in the fourth cluster.…”

“…As Kangas (1997, p. 492) concludes, “responses to general-level questions speak clearly in favour of social solidarity, whereas more specified questions bring out the more selfish side of people”. It could be argued, therefore, that the question E25 –as being framed in the constrained or trade-off fashion– measures support for work-family reconciliation policies more reliably so than more general questions about welfare attitudes (Busemeyer and Garritzmann, 2017; Doblytė and Tejero, 2021; Neimanns and Busemeyer, 2021).…”

“…Further, the existing research that approaches such attitudes usually focuses on support for the public provision or government responsibility for childcare, which tends to be high (Chung and Meuleman, 2017; Guo and Gilbert, 2014). Rarely does it study the questions of financing or public willingness to spend more on services to reconcile work and family roles (for an exception, see Doblytė and Tejero, 2021 or Neimanns and Busemeyer, 2021). Public support, nonetheless, might be more contested in this latter case (Neimanns and Busemeyer, 2021).…”

Intereses y valores: la satisfacción con las pensiones y la sanidad en España antes y después de la Gran Recesión

“…41-60 much greater for specific functions such as healthcare and pensions (Busemeyer, Goerres and Weschle, 2009). Women also tend to demonstrate this more positive profile towards welfare policies in general, although this situation is more evident with regard to family-related policies, which they are much more likely to receive (Linos and West, 2003;Doblytė and Tejero, 2020).…”