Responsive to Whom? Contrasting Differentiated Policy Responsiveness in Life-Course and Labour Market Risk-Related Programs

Policy responsiveness scholars have shown that social policy does respond to public opinion, but that responsiveness might be conditional on income group. Where the spending preferences of the rich and the poor diverge, it is more likely that policy will respond to the preferences of the rich (Peters and Ensink 2015). However, more research is necessary to show whether the same conclusion applies when looking at differentiated responsiveness by policy field. By combining OECD expenditure data with ISSP survey data, we aim to fill this gap and analyse differentiated policy responsiveness for unemployment, old-age pension and health care policy. Since old age and failing health are life-course related risks and, thus, cut across the income distribution, but unemployment is a labour market-related risk, we expect less preference divergence when it comes to the first two in comparison to the third. Thus, we expect to see more differentiated responsiveness in the case of unemployment, than in the case of health care and old age pension policy.