An asset theory of social policy preferences
By: IVERSEN, Torben
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Contributor(s): SOSKICE, David.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: 2001American Political Science Review 95, 4, p. 875-895Abstract: We present a theory of social policy preferences that emphasizes the composition of people`s skills. The key to our argument is that individuals who have made risky investments in skills will demand insurance against the possible future loss of income from those investments. Because the tranferability of skill is inversely related to their specifity, workers with specific skill face a potentially long spell of unemployment or a significant decline in income in the event of job loss. Workers deriving most of their income from specific skills therefore have strong incentives to support social policies that protect them against such uncertainty. This is not the case for general skill workers, for whom the costs of social protection with more prominently. We test the theory on public opinion data for eleven advanced damocracies and suggest how differcnes in educational systems can help explain croos-national differences in the level of social protection
| Item type | Current location | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Periódico | Biblioteca Graciliano Ramos | Periódico | Not for loan |
We present a theory of social policy preferences that emphasizes the composition of people`s skills. The key to our argument is that individuals who have made risky investments in skills will demand insurance against the possible future loss of income from those investments. Because the tranferability of skill is inversely related to their specifity, workers with specific skill face a potentially long spell of unemployment or a significant decline in income in the event of job loss. Workers deriving most of their income from specific skills therefore have strong incentives to support social policies that protect them against such uncertainty. This is not the case for general skill workers, for whom the costs of social protection with more prominently. We test the theory on public opinion data for eleven advanced damocracies and suggest how differcnes in educational systems can help explain croos-national differences in the level of social protection
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