This paper considers the potential for the cultural transmission of attitudes toward work, welfare, and individual responsibility to explain the intergenerational correlation in welfare receipt. Specifically, we investigate whether 18-year olds’ views about social benefits and the drivers of social inequality depend on their families’ welfare histories. We begin by incorporating welfare receipt into a theoretical model of the cultural transmission of work-welfare attitudes across generations. Consistent with the predictions of our model, we find that young people’s attitudes towards work and welfare are shaped by socialization within their families. Young people are more likely to oppose generous social benefits and adopt an internal view of social inequality if their mothers support these views, if their mothers were employed while they were growing up, and if their families never received welfare. These results are consistent with —though do not definitively establish— the existence of an intergenerational welfare culture.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: 40 pages Date of creation: 2008 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:1059
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 5th Floor, Economics and Commerce Building, Victoria, 3010, Australia Phone: +61 3 8344 5289 Fax: +61 3 8344 6899 Email: Web page: http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Colemann Leong).
Find related papers by JEL classification: I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: