Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Support for Centralization of Welfare (Dependents)
Resistance toward Welfare Centralization
(Full Population)
0.45
0.4
0.35
0.6
0.5
0.3
0.4
0.25
0.3
0.2
0.15
0.2
0.1
0.1
0.05
0
0
49.8
64
105
132
180
240
49.8
64
105
132
180
240
Standarized GDP per capita (EU av. = 100)
Standarized GDP per capita (EU av. = 100)
0.22
0.25
0.28
0.33
0.36
0.22
0.25
0.28
0.33
0.36
FIGURE 4.7. Preferences About Social Policy Centralization in the European Union
Brinegar et al.
2004
; Marks and Steenberger
2004
). Consistently, preferences
for social policy integration reflect differences in the level of unemployment
and the effort countries devote to the activation of labor markets.
Given the geography of risk presented previously, there is little room for
agreement within the European citizenry on a common European welfare state.
The potential externalities between this hypothetical system and an array of
pretty heterogeneous labor markets reduce the political room for institutional
changes that demand national units delegating redistributive policy to Brussels.
Taken together, these results trace a direct connection between the geography
of labor markets and individual institutional preferences that is consistent with
the notion that a heterogeneous geography of labor markets constrains the
centralization of interpersonal redistribution.
The second channel through which economic geography shapes individual
preferences is the interplay between the member states' levels of aggregate
income (w in the analytical model) and income inequality (w
i
's spread). The
findings convey that the geography of income inequality has a very substantial
impact on citizen's attitudes toward a hypothetical centralized welfare system in
the European Union. As the estimates of a generalized mixed level ordinal logit
model are not interpretable directly,
Figure 4.7
presents two sets of predicted
probabilities for citizens' positions. The panel on the left displays, for the full
population, the probability of showing “strong opposition” conditional on the
countries' levels of GDP per capita (x axis) and income inequality (different
series). In contrast, the panel on the right is limited to the dependent population
only, citizens whose main source of income is welfare state transfers, and
displays the probability of showing “strong support” for the transformation of
national welfare systems into a common European welfare state.
Consider first the results based on the full population. Citizens in poor coun-
tries are much less likely to oppose centralization of redistribution regardless
of the level of inequality. As countries become wealthier though, citizens' pref-
erences diverge as a function of countries' levels of inequality.
Ceteris paribus
,
as inequality within rich countries increases, so does the opposition to the
