Who Should Finance Childcare? Multilevel Analysis of 24 Countries

Abstract

This paper examines how the individual and country-level factors affect the childcare financing attitudes, particularly the effect of socialization in a particular welfare regime. This area of research is fraught with methodological and conceptual issues, including the over-reliance on Esping-Andersen's regime typology. Therefore, the authors also investigate whether a more family-policy-nuanced categorization of welfare regimes better accounts for the crosscountry variations in childcare attitudes. Using the 2012 ISSP data, the authors conducted the multilevel analysis of 24 European countries, and while the effect of most predictors is generally consistent with the previous research, this study's most important finding is that the alternative Leitner's "Varieties of Familialism" typology better accounts for the cross-national variations in childcare attitudes than the classical Esping-Anderson's typology. This speaks of the importance of a programmatic approach in the welfare state attitudes analysis which links the public support for specific social programs to its unique characteristics.

Public policies supporting families with children across welfare regimes: An empirical assessment of six European countries

“…Croatia , a former Yugoslav republic, shares some similarities with Southern European countries, but is a post-communist type of welfare state (Baturina et al, 2011; Dobrotić and Vučković Juroš, 2016). Expenditures on families are among the lowest of the analysed countries (see Tables S1 and S2 in the supplemental material), but there is a variety of public policies supporting children and parenthood.…”

“…To better understand and quantify the impact of public policies on the well-being of families with children, their incidence, poverty impact and cost compensation are analysed. This is a comparative analysis of cash support from public policies for families with children provided by countries representing five welfare regimes: Sweden (Social-Democratic), Germany (Conservative), Greece (Southern European), the United Kingdom (UK, Liberal), the Slovak Republic and Croatia (Post-communist) (Aidukaite, 2009;Dobrotić and Vučković Juroš, 2016;Esping-Andersen, 1990;Gauthier, 2002). The structure and distribution of income support from the following public policies is analysed: social assistance and housing benefits, child benefits and tax reliefs for dependent children, using the microsimulation model EUROMOD.…”

Care Policy in Slovenia: Divergent Trends and Convergent Attitudes

“…Finally, one crucial element explaining why individuals support public intervention in care provision was shown to be the current care provision -both in terms of quality and quantity (Chung and Meuleman, 2016;Ellingsaeter and Gulbrandsen, 2007). Hence, it has indeed been shown that existing policy structures shape people's welfare attitudes and views on the extent to which the state should provide a certain benefit or services Tepe, 2010, 2012;Dobrotić and Vučković Juroš, 2016), or regarding who deserves benefits (Koostra and Roosma, 2018). The relationship between current structures and support can be both positive (reward/punishment reactions) or negative (improvement/overburden reactions), although a U-shaped relationship has also been found in the case of public childcare -i.e.…”

A Soldier’s State? Veterans and the Welfare Regime in Croatia

“…Overall, Orenstein concludes that European post-socialist states drew on their conservative Bismarckian traditions, with a strong reliance on social insurance and status-preserving benefits where "the better off have a stronger safety net" and where traditional family structures are supported (2008: 92). Going back to the discussion of familialism as a characteristic of conservative regimes, Dobrotić and Vučković (2016) classify Croatia in the explicit familialism group, where the state reinforces existing patriarchal relationships by relying on the family as the main source of care provision (Leitner 2003).…”