Attitudes towards Social Security: Review of Literature
Attitudes towards Social Security: Review of Literature

Summary/Abstract: There has not been enough attention given to the topic of social security in Slovak psychological research; although the state of social protection, legal aspects of social security or themes of social services, social policy and social care are well described by economists, sociologists, lawyers or social workers. The article provides an overview of the current knowledge of social security attitudes as attitudes have been a research topic of social psychology for a long time. Social security benefits and services provided by welfare states are linked to many predictable or unpredictable events; such as unemployment, illness, birth of a child or retirement. The questions that could arise are: who has a positive or negative attitude towards providing social security benefits and services?; who deserves the help?; why and to what extent?; and if there are any causal differences between European countries. This review is divided into four main parts. Firstly, a brief description of the social security system in the Slovak Republic is provided. The social security system consists of social insurance, state social support, and social assistance. They are based upon dissimilar principles, i.e. the principle of merit, equality and need, respectively. Within the European Union, the coordination of the social security system is applied. However, due to the specific conditions in every country, it is not possible to establish a unified social security system yet. Secondly, the paper describes and summarizes different types of welfare states in the context of chosen typologies. It begins with the typology of Esping-Andersen (1990), Leibfried, (1992), Ferrera (1996), and Bonoli (1997) and continues with recent research that lead to the question about numbers and different types of welfare states e.g. Arts and Gellisen (2001) or Gryaznova (2013). Thirdly, the definition of social security attitudes in relation to Fishbein´s and Ajzen´s theory is presented. The possibility of categorizing welfare attitudes into three levels, according to the degree of generality, is outlined. The most general category is welfare state attitudes, more specific one are attitudes towards different types of welfare state. These are: Social democratic, Conservative, Liberal, and Radical. It is possible to divide people into attitudinal types and analyse their attitudes or specific traits. At the most specific level, there are attitudes towards providing benefits and services to different groups of beneficiaries, such as pensioners, the unemployed or single parents. Finally, the results of research on determinants of social security attitudes carried out are described. The large amount of research is built on survey databases such as the European Social Survey or International Social Survey Program.

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