Formative Experiences and Welfare State Expectations: A Cohort Analysis of Social Spending Preferences in Switzerland

ABSTRACT Socioeconomic developments in high‐income countries since the postwar era have induced fundamental changes in the predominant social risks to which people are exposed. This article seeks to determine whether this evolution is accompanied by changing expectations of the welfare state. It examines how family exposure to social risks as people come of age influences redistributive preferences later in life, and how aggregate shifts in social risk exposure across birth cohorts may correspond to intergenerational change in preferences. Age‐period‐cohort analyses using retrospective life‐history and time series data reveal how support for spending on retirement, unemployment benefits, childcare, and social aid have developed across people born between 1918 and 1991 and participating in the Swiss Household Panel. Early‐life exposure to social risks in the household is associated with high support for social spending, and individuals may durably support the welfare domains that best cover the type of risk their family experienced. An increase in new social risk exposure across birth cohorts is correlated with a weak intergenerational preference change. The study sheds light on how material conditions during the formative years may socialise individuals towards durable welfare attitudes, and opens a research agenda for studying welfare state expectations in the long run.