Unemployment Insurance for All? Social Preferences Evolution in Europe Since the Lifting of the Iron Curtain

This paper examines the evolution of social preferences over government unemployment insurance in Europe. We find an ‘East‐West divide’ in attitudes towards this role of government policy, with lower support in Eastern Europe for government action to correct adverse labour‐market outcomes. This difference is associated with preference persistence among the older generation educated during communism. The younger cohort does not display the same pattern, a result consistent with cohort differences in social preferences but not sufficient, in a single cross‐section, to identify preference change over time. The results are corroborated by several tests.