When Explanations for Poverty Help Explain Social Policy Preferences: The Case of European Public Opinion Amidst the Economic Recession (2009–2014)

Individuals hold beliefs about what causes poverty, and those beliefs have been theorized to explain policy preferences and ultimately cross-country variations in welfare states. However, there has been little empirical work on the effects of poverty attributions on welfare state attitudes. We seek to fill this gap by making use of Eurobarometer data from 27 European countries in the years 2009, 2010 and 2014 to explore the effects of poverty attributions on judgments about economic inequality as well as preferences regarding the welfare state. Relying on a four-type typology of poverty attribution which includes individual fate, individual blame, social fate and social blame as potential explanations for poverty, our analyses show that these poverty attributions are associated with judgments about inequality and broadly defined support for the welfare state, but have little or no effect on more concrete policy proposals such as unemployment benefits or increase of social welfare at the expense of higher taxes.