Ethnic Heterogeneity and the Limits of Altruism

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Ethnic Heterogeneity and the Limits of Altruism

• Maureen A. Eger
• Department of Sociology, University of Washington

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Surprising?

• Evolutionary biology Humans are biologically
  predisposed to maximize the welfare of their own
  genes rather than the welfare of individuals who
  do not share any of their genetic makeup (Dawkins
  1976).
• Evolutionary psychology An as-if-kin mechanism
  leads individuals to care about the welfare of
  those who share other non-familial similarities
  that signify a geneticthough biologically
  distantrelationship (Burnstein et al. 2002).
• Sociobiology The propensity to favor, in
  attitudes and behavior, individuals of the same
  ethnicity is biological (van de Berghe, 1981).

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From social psychology

• Experiments show that people strongly prefer
  members of their own group, even when one's
  "group" is the result of random assignment and
  holds little consequence for the subject (Tajfel
  et al., 1971 Brewer, 1979).
• In-group members are willing to differentially
  distribute benefits to their own group versus
  members of other groups (Brewer, 1979 Mullen,
  Brown, Smith, 1992 Tajfel, Billig, Bundy,
  Flament, 1971 Turner, 1975, 1981).

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The Limits of Altruism?

• In a homogeneous group, egoism merges
  indistinguishable with altruism yet, as the
  group expands in numbers, as homogeneity
  declines, and as conflicting interests increase
  it becomes more difficult to sacrifice ones own
  interests in order to advance anothers.
• Dahl, 1996642

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Increasing Ethnic Heterogeneity

• United Nations, Population Studies, July 2005
  http//www.un.org/esa/population/publications/ittm
  igdev2005/PopulationDivI_pp.pdf

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Connection to the welfare state

• Sweden is a small country...Up to 10 years ago
  it was very homogeneous as a country. Everything
  was very alike. Up until then all Swedes looked
  the same almost thought the same. Because we are
  all so equal, we can share the pain of the
  problems... As Sweden gets more divided, it's
  more difficult to keep this idea of sharing the
  pain.
• Ingemar Goransson, Swedish blue-collar union
  negotiator (quoted in The New York Times, May
  2006)

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Research Questions

• Do rapid changes in the demographic make-up of
  countries affect citizens attitudes about the
  generosity or universality of social welfare
  benefits?
• Does ethnic heterogeneity affect all people in a
  relatively uniform way, as suggested by
  evolutionary biology and social psychology, or do
  institutional arrangements have an intervening
  effect on this relationship?

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Support for Social Expenditure - Previous
Explanations

• Individual level
• class interests
• Institutional level
• Policy type universal or means-tested
• Values and norms
• Increasing returns
• Variation attributed to regime type or class
  position only.
• None take into account broader societal change or
  other sources of variation within countries.

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Theory - In-group bias

• In-group members are willing to differentially
  distribute benefits to their own group versus
  members of other groups (Brewer, 1979 Mullen,
  Brown, Smith, 1992 Tajfel, Billig, Bundy,
  Flament, 1971 Turner, 1975, 1981).

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Effect of Institutions

• Institutions constrain political behavior--but do
  they affect attitudes?
• Norms embedded in the institution reinforce
  attitudes about social welfare (Rothstein 1998).
• Jetten, Spears, and Manstead (1996) find that the
  norm of fairness (versus a norm of
  discrimination) does diminish (but not eliminate)
  the effects of in-group bias on the distribution
  of benefits to in-group and out-group members.

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Hypotheses

• Hypothesis 1 As countries experience rapid
  increases in racial and ethnic heterogeneity,
  citizens will become less likely to support
  welfare state expenditure.
• Hypothesis 2 Particular institutional
  arrangements temperbut do not eradicatethe
  effects of in-group bias.

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Data

• European Social Survey (ESS) Cumulative File
  (2002-2004).
• OECD (2002-2004).
• The World Banks Database of Political
  Institutions (2004).
• The Quality of Government Cross-sectional Data
  Set (Rothstein et al., 2002).
• The EU Integration Index (Geddes et al. 2005).

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Data

• Countries included Austria, Belgium, Czech Rep.,
  Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
  Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, the
  Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia,
  Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain.
• N 77,879
• DV The government should reduce differences in
  income levels.
• Scale 1-5, with 5 strongly disagree.

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Independent variables

• Individual-level demographic
• Gender Education in years Religiosity Born in
  Country Member of Ethnic Minority Unemployed
  for at least 3M.
• Individual-level attitudinal
• Trust people in country Satisfied in democracy
  Left/Right Scale Immigrants make country
  better/worse.
• Country-level demographic
• Percent foreign-born
• Religious fractionalization
• Country-level institutional
• SOCX
• Corporatist score
• Nationality policies index
• Plurality

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Methods

• Survey Linear Regression with Clusters.
• svyregress in Stata.

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Results

• Support for hypotheses 1 and 2.
• Ethnic and religious heterogeneity decrease
  support for the welfare state.
• Institutions have a positive effect on this
  measure of support.

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Conclusions Next Steps

• Standardized coefficients demonstrate that
  measures of diversity have some of the largest
  effects on support for the welfare state.
• But institutionsespecially ones that promote
  integrationhave a positive effect on this
  measure of support.
• ISSP RofG I-IV
• Assess within country effects as well.
• Includes non-European countries.
• Greater institutional variation.
• Work in progress

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The end
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