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Class, Union, or Party Allegiance? Comparing Pension Reform Preferences in Britain and Germany

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Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below

Abstract

This chapter explores to what degree public opinion, particularly specific social groups including social classes, retirees, members of trade unions, and supporters of political parties, defend the status quo or are willing to support reforms. It distinguishes two major dimensions of pension-specific attitudes, retrenchment and redistribution. Using data from the 2008 European Social Survey, the study compares two countries with different pension systems, organized interests, and party systems: Britain and Germany. Our results show pronounced cross-national differences in attitudes towards the redistributive character of the pensions system but less variation with regard to retrenchment of pension benefits. Political affiliations show also more variation than social classes, indicating that ideological alignment is more pronounced than social class.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We exclude respondents still in education and do not split up retirees into early retired and “regularly” retired people. The rate of early retirement before age 65 is high for women in Britain (normal retirement at age 60, but 65 for men), and medium-high but declining for men and women in Germany (phased-in increases in pre-retirement since the mid-1990s).

  2. 2.

    2.6 per cent of the respondents chose a fourth answer “none of these”. We ignore this as a negligible percentage of respondents by analysing these responses as missing.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Bernhard Ebbinghaus

  2. SFB 884 “Political Economy of Reforms”, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Elias Naumann

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  1. Bernhard Ebbinghaus
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  2. Elias Naumann
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Bernhard Ebbinghaus

  2. SFB 884 “Political Economy of Reforms”, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Elias Naumann

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Ebbinghaus, B., Naumann, E. (2018). Class, Union, or Party Allegiance? Comparing Pension Reform Preferences in Britain and Germany. In: Ebbinghaus, B., Naumann, E. (eds) Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63652-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63652-8_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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