{"title":"Social benefits for European Union immigrants? A survey experiment on misperceptions","authors":"Julian Jäger","doi":"10.1177/14651165241229593","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Using new experimental panel data for Germany, I investigate the role of income misperceptions for welfare restrictive preferences toward European Union immigrants. A majority of respondents misperceive their relative income position in Germany and the European Union and demand that European Union immigrants work and pay taxes before obtaining equal rights to social benefits. Randomized treatments inform subjects about their position in the national and European Union income distribution. My results provide evidence that welfare restrictive preferences are formed in the context of misperceived own income positions: Respondents become more welfare restrictive when they learn about a higher national or lower European Union income position. Information about European Union misperceptions has a persistent treatment effect after 3 months, driven by respondents with larger initial misperceptions, but becomes insignificant after one year.","PeriodicalId":12077,"journal":{"name":"European Union Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Union Politics","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165241229593","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Using new experimental panel data for Germany, I investigate the role of income misperceptions for welfare restrictive preferences toward European Union immigrants. A majority of respondents misperceive their relative income position in Germany and the European Union and demand that European Union immigrants work and pay taxes before obtaining equal rights to social benefits. Randomized treatments inform subjects about their position in the national and European Union income distribution. My results provide evidence that welfare restrictive preferences are formed in the context of misperceived own income positions: Respondents become more welfare restrictive when they learn about a higher national or lower European Union income position. Information about European Union misperceptions has a persistent treatment effect after 3 months, driven by respondents with larger initial misperceptions, but becomes insignificant after one year.
期刊介绍:
European Union Politics is an international academic journal for advanced peer-reviewed research and scholarship on all aspects of the process of government, politics and policy in the European Union. It aims to stimulate debate and provide a forum to bridge the theoretical and empirical analysis on the political unification of Europe. It represents no particular school or approach, nor is it wedded to any particular methodology. In particular it welcomes articles that offer a new theoretical argument, analyze original data in a novel fashion or present an innovative methodological approach. The Editors invite submissions from all sub-fields of contemporary political science, including international relations, comparative politics, public administration, public policy and political theory.