From immigration over redistributive attitudes to welfare spending. The moderating role of social program design

Abstract Whereas individual-level studies find that encompassing welfare states might in general be incompatible with large-scale immigration, studies on welfare spending find inconclusive results. We address this puzzle by pointing to the moderating role of social program design. We separate programs according to their degree of natives’ interest based on coverage, generosity and stratification characteristics for the social areas of unemployment, sickness/disability, and pensions for 18 OECD countries. We then test the moderating effect of natives’ interest on the impact of immigration on individual support for social spending and actual social spending in the three areas. Our results indicate that programs do react to immigration by decreasing support and budgets when natives’ interest is low, whereas programs where the interest of natives is high tend to increase individual support and spending.