Welfare opinion 2010

Project description

The project is a replication of the Swedish Welfare State Surveys, a series of surveys of attitudes towards welfare policies in Sweden. The questions we raise concern the dynamics of welfare attitudes. More specifically, they concern (a) the overall attitudinal trends regarding welfare policies; (b) the dimensionality of welfare attitudes and their changes over time; (c) the correlations between social cleavages (such as class, gender and generation) and attitudes to welfare policies; and (d) the mechanisms that link social cleavages and attitudes. We will extend previous research in several respects. Firstly, we are interested in analysing to what extent conceptions about the future may affect present-day attitudes. This goes both for conceptions about the individual’s future situation and for the perceived impact of possible institutional changes. Secondly, we want to study the impact of extra- individual factors, such as social networks and local contexts, on welfare attitudes. Thirdly, we want to study in more detail attitudes among small but strategically interesting groups, such as lone parents and specific groups in the Service class. We will field the replication of the Swedish Welfare State Survey in Feb-March 2010. The survey will be addressed to 7000 individuals and is conducted as a postal survey with several reminders.