Executive summary of the master thesis of Chiara Moruzzi. Data Analytics for politics, society and complex organizations within the MA in Public and Corporate Communication (COM), University of Milano. Academic year: 2023/2024
Supervisor: Prof.ssa Giulia Dotti Sani
Co-supervisor: Prof. Marcello Natili
Introduction
The thesis investigates the role of political and economic factors in the formation of attitudes towards two anti-poverty redistributive policies, in particular European Minimum Income (EMI) and Universal basic income (UBI).
European minimum income is a social assistance means-tested provision to be implemented first at the supranational level and then at the national one. Universal basic income is a flat-rate unconditional provision directed to all citizens equally and to be implemented at the national level. Even though the two policies act in rather different ways, they share the common goal of tackling poverty and social exclusion.
At the present moment Europe is witnessing an increasing spread of welfare Euroscepticism, that is the general distrust of people in the harmonization of policies across states at the European level. At the same time the increasing cost of life resulting from ongoing conflicts and energetic crisis constitutes a great challenge that the newly elected European Parliament will have to address when strategizing new tools to fight poverty and social exclusion across Europe. Knowing the determinants behind individual support is crucial to understand how to effectively campaign and promote such provisions.
Previous research shows that the most relevant factors in shaping individual support towards anti-poverty policies can be included into two main dimensions: the political and the economic one. However, a comprehensive framework on how these two spheres affect public opinion with concern to both European minimum income and Universal basic income is still missing. At the same time literature lacks a deeper understanding of how such dimensions interact in the formation of individual attitudes towards these two policies.
Research questions
Based on the literature review, the thesis explores two main research questions:
- How do political ideology and economic conditions affect support for EMI and UBI?
- Are there differences in the determinants of public support between the two policies?
Data and methodology
The thesis aimed at answering these questions using European Social Survey Multilevel data from round 8. The data were collected in 2016. The research design encompasses multilevel logistic models in order to capture between and within countries variations.
Out of the 23 countries included in the survey, only 18 of them were considered as only EU member states were theoretically meaningful to take into account. The sample includes roughly 32000 respondents.
The two dependent variables used measure respectively support towards European minimum income and Universal basic income. They are both dichotomous and they have value 0 when the respondents is “Against” the policy and value 1 when he/she is “In favour”.
Four predictors were included in the analysis: two at the micro and two at the macro level, in both cases one for the political dimension and one for the economic dimension. At the micro level, the chosen predictors were self-assessed political placement and individual economic conditions based on household’s income. At the macro level, the independent variables included were Country’s government composition and GDP per capita measured in euros per inhabitant and with year of reference 2016.
To estimate the results, the analysis encompassed a multilevel random intercept logistic model, with the inclusion, in the final step, of the interaction between the political and the economic predictors at the individual level.
Results
From the analysis, it is possible to conclude that, as previous findings suggest, left-leaning individuals seem to be more likely to support both European minimum income and Universal basic income, with generally lower levels of support in the case of UBI compared to EMI.
As regards the different effect of the individual political dimension on support towards the two policies, self-assessed political placement has a slightly bigger effect on support towards European minimum income than it has on support towards Universal basic income. However, it should be noted that this difference is rather small.
With concern to the economic dimension, people in difficult economic conditions seem to be more likely to support both European minimum income and Universal basic income compared to those in better economic situations. This result is in line with the self-interest theory, which argues that those who are more in need, will also be more likely to support this kind of social policies. Additionally, individual economic conditions seem to have a milder effect on support towards European minimum income than they have on support to Universal basic income.
As regards the interaction between the political and the economic sphere at the individual level, some interesting results can be pointed out. In particular, regardless of their economic conditions, left-leaning people appear to be more likely to support both European minimum income and Universal basic income compared to right-leaning ones.
Interestingly, the same thing cannot be said looking at respondents’ economic conditions regardless of their political placement: in the case of support towards European minimum income, the direction and the magnitude of the effect of economic conditions changes considering individuals located in different areas of the political spectrum. In particular, in the case of left-leaning individuals, their likelihood of supporting EMI seems to slightly increase as economic conditions improve, going against the general tendency observed so far.
Moreover, from Figure 3 it is possible to observe a general increase in the magnitude of the effect of ideology as individual economic conditions improve; when people are in difficult economic conditions, self-assessed political placement appears to be a less relevant factor influencing individual support towards European minimum income.
Moving to Universal Basic Income, regardless of their political placement people in worse economic conditions will be more likely to support UBI compared to those in better economic situations. However, as in the previous case, the relevance of self-assessed political placement in determining support towards the policy seems to increase as individual economic conditions improve. Thus, also in this case, political ideology seems to matter less for people in very difficult economic situations compared to those in better ones.
Conclusions
To conclude, the thesis offered some interesting insights on how the political and the economic dimensions interact in influencing people’s support towards European minimum income and Universal basic income in European countries. However, in light of the limitations presented above, this work only provides some preliminary information that further research could investigate more deeply and more comprehensively, especially in view of overcoming the obstacles encountered in the analysis at the present stage