Population ageing and demographic change make the field of care for older adults a key issue for the future development of welfare states and one of the central policy issues where states need to provide user-centred services on the one hand while ensuring the financial sustainability of the system on the other. The aim of this dissertation is to identify people's attitudes towards the role of the welfare state in the care for older adults and the arguments they use to justify these attitudes. It compares four countries representing four different welfare regimes: Germany, Norway, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. The thesis contributes to the literature on the contemporary development and change of welfare states, as well as to research on attitudes towards specific aspects and policies of welfare states. The thesis applies institutional theories in the field of attitudes towards the welfare state in the context of the demographic change and ageing population. It focuses on the specific sectoral areas of long-term care and pensions. A mixed-method research approach is used, primarily emphasizing qualitative methodology, partly complemented by quantitative methods to contextualise the findings. The data used for the empirical work was collected as part of the project Welfare State Futures: Our Children's Europe (2015-2018). Democratic forums are analysed through a reflexive thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke. The results support the theoretically expected deservingness for benefits and services for older people in all four countries. The attitudes are largely rooted in the historical characteristics of the system; support is stronger in social democratic (Norway) and post-socialist (Slovenia) contexts, lower in liberal (UK) and fluctuating in conservative-corporatist (Germany) contexts. Besides the historical basis, the analysis also identifies certain atypical deviations from specific welfare regime characteristics, particularly in Germany and Norway, with tendencies towards a stronger role of the market and individual (Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom) and a more pronounced role of the family (Germany and Norway).
|