Financing the welfare state in times of extreme crisis: public support for health care spending during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany

ABSTRACT

Employing new and original survey data collected in three waves (April/May and November 2020 as well as May 2021) in Germany, this paper studies the dynamics of individual-level support for additional health care spending. A first major finding is that, so far, health care spending preferences have not radically changed during the Covid-19 pandemic, at least at the aggregate level. A more detailed analysis reveals, secondly, that individual-level support for additional spending on health care is strongly conditioned by performance perceptions and, to a lesser extent, general political trust. Citizens who regard the system as badly (well) prepared to cope with the crisis are more likely to support (oppose) additional spending. Higher levels of political trust are also positively associated with spending support, but to a lesser degree. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy-making and welfare state politics in the post-pandemic era.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19 pandemic
• Germany
• health care spending
• political trust
• welfare state attitudes

Acknowledgements

I thank Claudia Diehl, Julian Garritzmann, Carsten Jensen, Staffan Kumlin, and Elias Naumann as well as the anonymous reviewers of this journal for extremely helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Philipp Kling, Konstantin Mozer and Thomas Wöhler for their support in administering the survey. Funding was generously provided by the Excellence Cluster ‘The Politics of Inequality’, DFG Grant EXC 2035/1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Further details and documentation can be found here: https://www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/en/inequality/research/covid-19-and-inequality-surveys-program/ (accessed August 30, 2021).

2 See, for instance, this commentary in the SPIEGEL: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/corona-chaos-in-deutschland-multiples-staatsversagen-kommentar-a-2647f186-883e-4823-8cc4-9a0b3de38af9 (accessed March 30, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [grant number EXC 2035/1].

Notes on contributors

Marius R. Busemeyer

Marius R. Busemeyer is Professor of Political Science and Speaker of the Excellence Cluster ‘The Politics of Inequality’ at the University of Konstanz. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the WSI, Düsseldorf.