How Do Welfare Regimes Moderate the Impact of Individual Factors on Citizens' Attitudes Toward the Welfare State? Comparative Analysis of the United States, Germany, and Sweden

This study examined the effect of the welfare regime on welfare attitudes and the moderating effect on the relationship between individual-level factors and welfare attitudes. Integrating the conditional self-interest perspective with Esping-Andersen’s typology of three welfare regimes, this study hypothesized that institutional differences among the three welfare regimes would moderate the impacts of individual-level factors on welfare attitudes. To test the hypothesis, we analyzed data from the World Values Survey of 5,485 citizens from three countries: the United States, Germany, and Sweden. Results showed that welfare regimes have a significant impact on citizens’ attitudes toward welfare. The study also found that the impact of citizens’ characteristics on welfare attitudes varied across the three welfare regimes. This study found that in the liberal welfare regime, welfare attitudes are stratified by socioeconomic class and political ideology, while in the conservative welfare regime, they are highly convergent. We discussed future research directions based on our findings.