Education’s Role in Shaping Redistribution Preferences and Vote Choice in Canada

• In Event: Welfare State Politics in Canada

Abstract

This research examines the interaction between the educational divide, attitudes toward redistribution and vote choice in Canada. While traditional political economy models predict that higher education levels lead to opposition to redistribution out of material self-interest and “by virtue of its insurance function” (Alesina and Giuliano, 2011), alternative theories suggest that those with lower educational attainment may oppose the welfare state to differentiate themselves from beneficiaries and maintain a form of “social status” (Attewell, 2022). Our research, grounded in Cavaillé and Trump’s (2015) bi-dimensional framework of attitudes toward redistribution, first examines the effects of educational attainment on support for the welfare state and attitudes towards the deservingness of welfare recipients. Second, we investigate how these attitudes influence vote choice in Canadian elections.

Drawing from studies conducted in Europe and the United States, we derive five hypotheses: higher education likely decreases support for extensive welfare policies (H1) and fosters more generous views on the deservingness of welfare recipients (H2), while lower educational levels are expected to lead to stronger support for state welfare interventions (H3) but with stricter views on beneficiary deservingness (H4). These conflicting attitudes, reflecting an educational divide in the context of Canada’s knowledge economy, are hypothesized to mediate the relationship between education and voting behaviour (H5).

Using data from the 2019 and 2021 Canadian Election Studies, our quantitative strategy employs Principal Component Analysis to delineate more clearly the two dimensions of attitudes toward redistribution (i.e., support for welfare policies and perceptions of welfare recipient deservingness), as well as regression models to assess the association between education level and these attitudes. Importantly, our study includes mediation analyses in multinomial logistic regressions to unravel how these attitudes, especially perceptions of deservingness, mediate the impact of education on voting behaviour.

Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of the broader discourse on economic inequality and social solidarity by delineating the role of education, and the rise of the educational divide in shaping public preferences and political behaviour in Canada, which is an insightful case study for the comparative literature. We also make use of a unique approach to operationalizing attitudes toward redistribution, previously unapplied in the Canadian context. Among other things, our findings could entail important implications for understanding the rise of “welfare chauvinism,” contemporary electoral realignments in Canada and the design of suitable policies to address increasing economic disparities.

Authors

• Thomas Gareau-Paquette, Cornell University

• Jean-François Daoust, Université de Sherbrooke & University of Edinburgh