Sociology Trust creates the welfare state, not the other way around

Second Summer

Second Summer

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Scandinavians are world-renowned for their high trust levels, or credulity if you prefer. Descendants of Scandinavian immigrants to the USA (150 and 70 years ago, before the advent of the modern welfare states) still have high trust levels today, according to the below paper.

From the abstract:
Despite the fact that large welfare states are vulnerable to free-riding, the idea that universal welfare states lead to higher trust levels in the population has received some attention and support among political scientists recently. This paper argues that the opposite direction of causality is more plausible, i.e. that populations with higher trust levels are more prone to creating and successfully maintaining universal welfare states with high levels of taxation where publicly financed social insurance schemes.
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Bergh, A. and Bjørnskov, C. (2011), Historical Trust Levels Predict the Current Size of the Welfare State. Kyklos, 64: 1–19. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6435.2010.00492.x

If the hypothesis really holds water, this poses some interesting questions and explains perhaps why some countries don't have well-working welfare states.

Is a successful welfare-state not possible in nations with heterogeneous populations, i.e. many different ethnic, religious etc. groups?
 
Interesting question, which I will have to ponder more.

I don't think the issue is necessarily whether the population is heterogeneous though. Take for instance the U.S., which is currently so polarized on this issue. The half of the population that is for social services/a safety net is heterogeneous, consisting of different races, ethnic groups, levels of education, etc. IOW, I don't know that trust is necessarily tied to *sameness* as completely as may be assumed.
 
The present day US (or at least the parts I choose to inhabit) seem more resilient to population heterogeneity than much of the world. So maybe it's not as big of a trust issue here.
 
mlp said:
Interesting question, which I will have to ponder more.

I don't think the issue is necessarily whether the population is heterogeneous though. Take for instance the U.S., which is currently so polarized on this issue. The half of the population that is for social services/a safety net is heterogeneous, consisting of different races, ethnic groups, levels of education, etc. IOW, I don't know that trust is necessarily tied to *sameness* as completely as may be assumed.
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If you look at the countries that have well-working welfare systems though, they seem to be more homogeneous. But these days, due to high levels of immigration, populations in these countries are becoming increasingly diverse. At the same time it appears the welfare-state is under increasing pressure everywhere. I don't know if these two developments are related though. Anyway, most of the well-working welfare states in Europe are products of the social democratic / Labour movements, but these have also been losing support over the years, to the point where they have reinvented themselves as "New Labour" and other similar abominations that are quite different to their roots.
 
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Indian Summer said:
If you look at the countries that have well-working welfare systems though, they seem to be more homogeneous.
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They do? Can you give examples? Just curious really, Scandinavia is pretty homogeneous from my little knowledge, but otherwise I can't think of a great deal of correlation. It's not something I know a lot about (other countries welfare states).
 
SummerRain said:
They do? Can you give examples? Just curious really, Scandinavia is pretty homogeneous from my little knowledge, but otherwise I can't think of a great deal of correlation. It's not something I know a lot about (other countries welfare states).
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Particularly the Scandinavian countries and Finland seem to have relatively well-working welfare states, at least if you go by relative poverty rate: all below 5%. (Data from 1997). These countries also rank at the top of the list of happiest countries. The demographics of these countries reveal a relatively high homogeneity of the populations: around 10% - 20% ethnically non-native citizens. This compared to e.g. the US which is a "melting pot" of people from all over, with around 50% of mixed European ancestry (IIRC) being the largest group.

That said, homogeneity of the population alone doesn't automatically lead to a successful welfare state, as I'm sure we can find numerous examples of.
 
All I know is I now have the All in the Family song stuck in my head after reading the title.
 
I think the trust thing is a cultural thing. I know a Scandinavian guy online and he seems really, really trusting.
 
I should add that e.g. Belgium and Germany are doing quite well also on the relative poverty rate with 4.1% and 5.1% respectively, though it seems these countries also seem to have somewhat high homogeneity.

Generally, it seems the countries that have the lowest relative poverty rates are the ones that have the highest welfare expenditures as percentage of GDP.

France is an example of a country with high welfare expenditures (34.9% of GDP), pretty low relative poverty rate (6.1%) and a somewhat more mixed population (40% immigrants and their descendants).

Compare that to e.g. the US with welfare expenditures at only 19.4% of GDP, relative poverty at 15.1%, and a generally mixed population.
 
Could be culture. Look at Minnesota - lots of Scandinavians and Germans. High state welfare expenditures (23%) -3rd highest in the nation. Relatively low poverty rate (under 12%). Also notable for being one of the states without a death penalty. And it just recently legalized gay marriage.

America is such an interesting country because of its federal structure. We can have state-by-state comparisons which share more in common than nation-by-nation comparisons in Europe.

It would be interesting to dig up the statistics on a rather liberal state bordering a rather conservative state with similar population demographics.
 
mlp said:
Interesting question, which I will have to ponder more.

I don't think the issue is necessarily whether the population is heterogeneous though. Take for instance the U.S., which is currently so polarized on this issue. The half of the population that is for social services/a safety net is heterogeneous, consisting of different races, ethnic groups, levels of education, etc. IOW, I don't know that trust is necessarily tied to *sameness* as completely as may be assumed.
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Yes, it might not be necessarily have to be about ethnicity, but I wonder if at least some kind of shared value system / culture is necessary for it to work. The pro-welfare state people in the US might be a heterogeneous bunch, but that doesn't mean the system would necessarily work for them once it was in place.
 
Indian Summer said:
France is an example of a country with high welfare expenditures (34.9% of GDP), pretty low relative poverty rate (6.1%) and a somewhat more mixed population (40% immigrants and their descendants).
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das_nut said:
Could be culture. Look at Minnesota - lots of Scandinavians and Germans. High state welfare expenditures (23%) -3rd highest in the nation. Relatively low poverty rate (under 12%). Also notable for being one of the states without a death penalty. And it just recently legalized gay marriage.
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Yes, indeed. Some further thoughts on this: Maybe the reason why the welfare state has been successful in France is that despite a mixed population, their integration policy has traditionally focused on assimilation and national cohesion. Immigrants that came to France adapted and became completely French, and they adopted the French values. Or at least that was the intention, and how it mostly used to work, until more recent times.
 
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