Does Social Policy Offset Effects of Inequality on Well-being?

• In Event: Does liberal democracy promote social mobility and well-being?

Abstract

In the line of goals social policy pursue there is a particularly one that welfare states are crucially willing to achieve by any means. The aim is to diminish the level of inequality and, consecutively, to increase subjective well-being of population. Does successful social policy offset the effects of Inequality on subjective well-being? The question is at the top of agenda in social policy and subjective well-being research, yet there is no empirical evidence or compelling theoretical argument on this. In this paper we argue that successful social policy can alleviate the effects of perceived inequality on subjective well-being. We posit that in regions characterised by relatively low average income and high inequality, social policy by redistributing more regional budget shares on health, education and social programs, makes the impact of perceived inequality on well-being less severe. To test these hypotheses we combine two sources of data. First, we conduct a survey in 78 Russian regions that represents the whole Russian population (N = 25,000). Second, we enrich this data by merging it with objective indicators of social policy and its effectiveness in each of regions we covered in the survey. Bayesian Hierarchical Models with informative priors are used to estimate the effect sizes of cross-level interactions to evaluate the success of social policy to decrease the inequality level and lead to higher subjective well-being.

Author

• Kirill Chmel, National Research University "Higher School of Economics"