Inversion of Public Attitudes toward Support for High―Benefit/High―Cost Practices in Social Benefits

: Focusing on Shifts in the First Half of the 2010s

Abstract

This paper examines the trend in public attitudes towards high-benefit/high-cost practices in social benefits. From the results of a four-time repeated cross-sectional survey on support for social benefits, the trend of increasing support for a high-benefit/high-cost social welfare system （bigger “welfare state” orientation） is verified through the 2000s. However, we find a reversal trend in the 2015 survey. The result is robustly confirmed when applying post-stratification weights, which adjust the proportions of sex and age to correspond to those in national censuses.In addition, logistic regression analysis shows that the effects of social economic status on support for the high benefit system was weaker in 2015 than in 2000. In particular, the effect of age is not statistically significant in the 2015 survey, which is a result contrary to a positive and linear association with the 2000 survey data. These results are reconfirmed by a birth cohort analysis with the four data periods. In this analysis, we find that while basic trends in public attitudes are similar between each age and birth cohort, there are gaps in average and variance in the surveys. Most importantly, the relative degree of support for the high-benefit/high-cost system from the younger cohort and age group was stronger in 2015 than in 2000.