The Socioeconomic Gradient in Coping Attitudes Towards the COVID-19 Measures in Social Welfare Regimes in Europe

The recent COVID-19 pandemic posed great strength on the social welfare systems at the international level. The health, social and economic adverse effects increased the need for large-scale distributional public policies to protect the most vulnerable classes in the population. At the same time, the public health measures undertaken by the local governments to halt the spread of COVID, altered radically the usual way of living through imposing social isolation and quarantine measures. Not all people conform the same way to public health guidelines and there seems to exist a differential coping ability among the public to conform with the recent public health measures. The present study examines the socioeconomic and institutional trust gradient in coping with confinement, among respondents belonging in countries with alternative welfare state regimes. In addition, the study decomposes the relative impact of each socioeconomic and trust indicator upon the observed coping ability inequalities. All in all, the study finds that it is the differences in the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics that are mainly responsible for the reported discrepancies in coping among citizens of alternative welfare states. Institutional trust also exerts a significant impact upon individual coping with confinement. The findings differentiate with respect to the welfare state under study, indicating the buffering role of welfare state policies to the negative effects of the recent health shock experienced globally.