Graying Prospects: Popular Support for Pension Spending in Young and Old Societies

Objective: How does demography shape popular support for the welfare state? Aging populations and weakened social cohesion heighten the importance of elderly spending. Although the elderly are seen as deserving, pension spending may exacerbate tensions among younger generations facing uncertainty. We argue that preferences for spending on old-age pensions reflect both self-interest and perceptions of deservingness shaped by demographic context. Methods: We test our argument by pairing data on public preferences from surveys from 22 countries over 40 years with data on old-age dependency and social spending levels. Results: We find that while higher income expectations reduce support for pensions, effects are weaker in older societies where the elderly are viewed as part of the in-group. In contrast, support for unemployment benefits, which redistribute resources among working-age groups, is more closely linked to income expectations. Conclusion: Preferences for inter-generational redistribution differ from intra-generational ones. By calling attention to the interplay between individual prospections and collective altruism, our findings identify future battlegrounds over the welfare state.