Welfare attitudes among Dutch natives and ethnic minorities: assessing the mediating roles of economic self-interest, political ideology and political and social trust

This study examines differences in welfare attitudes between Dutch natives and Dutch citizens of Moroccan and Turkish descent. Due to its oversampling of Turks and Moroccans, the NELLS dataset provides a unique opportunity to study attitudinal differences and its causes. Making use of a parallel mediation model, the mediating effects of socio-economic status, political ideology, political trust and social trust are assessed. The latter two mechanisms have not been incorporated in previous studies on welfare attitudes of ethnic minorities. Similar to most previous studies, ethnic minorities are found to have more progressive welfare attitudes than natives. These attitudes are primarily caused by their more leftist political ideology, followed by their subpar socio-economic status. Assessing the mediating roles of political trust and social trust resulted in surprising findings. Previous studies found positive correlations between high levels of social and political trust and progressive welfare attitudes. Since ethnic minorities tend to have less social and political trust, it was hypothesized that this would lead to more conservative welfare attitudes. However, the relationship between both indicators of trust and welfare attitudes appeared to be negative. Therefore, the lower trust levels of the Turkish and Moroccan respondents resulted in even more progressive welfare attitudes.