Preferences for specific social welfare expenditure in Ireland

Many papers examine general level preferences for redistribution. However, few papers examine preferences for specific forms of redistribution. This paper examines the decomposition of demand for three major categories of social welfare expenditure in Ireland: unemployment payments, old age pensions and child benefit. The determinants of preferences are found to be fairly consistent with a self-interested economics perspective with respect to the utilisation and financing of these three specific schemes. In addition, the split sampling procedure used in the nationwide survey indicated that the provision of information on the schemes’ costs did not have a significant effect on preferences.