Attitudes towards redistributive spending in an era of demographic ageing: the rival pressures from age and income in 14 OECD countries

TLDR

The study examines how age and income shape attitudes toward welfare policies in advanced democracies, focusing on the interplay between intergenerational and intragenerational conflicts. Multivariate analysis of 1996 ISSP data from 14 OECD countries reveals that age, rather than income, is the primary determinant of welfare state preferences, with pronounced age cleavages in the United States and substantial country‑specific variation across policy areas.

Abstract

This article is about the relative impact of age and income on individual attitudes towards welfare state policies in advanced industrial democracies; that is, the extent to which the intergenerational conflict supercedes or complements intragenerational conflicts. On the basis of a multivariate statistical analysis of the 1996 ISSP Role of Government Data Set for 14 OECD countries, we find considerable age-related differences in welfare state preferences. In particular for the case of education spending, but also for other policy areas, we see that one's position in the life cycle is a more important predictor of preferences than income. Second, some countries, such as the United States, show a higher salience of the age cleavage across all policy fields; that is, age is a more important line of political preference formation in these countries than in others. Third, country characteristics matter. Although the relative salience of age varies across policy areas, we see — within one policy area — a large variance across countries.