Class bases of universal social policy

Abstract. Institutional pension policy is held to be one of the trade marks of the celebrated Scandinavian model. Universal national pensions guarantee a decent livelihood to every citizen irrespective of socio-economic status. Income-related pensions that are paid on top of the national pensions secure the standard of living achieved during the working career. This Scandinavian institutionalism has usually been associated with long-lasting working class hegemony, consolidated by the deliberate goal of abolishing means-testing from national pensions and expanding the scope and quality of income-related pensions. However, some studies challenge this interpretation. Instead, they emphasize the crucial role played by the middle classes. By using survey data from Finland, this study seeks to determine which socio-economic groups are in favour of the present Finnish pension policy model characterized by universal basic pensions and income-graduated work-merit pensions. The results show that workers and farmers are more willing to introduce means-testing and flat-rate pensions than white-collar workers. Correspondingly, these groups are more sceptical of income-graduated benefits. Middle classes, especially upper white-collar workers, support income graduated benefits and are more reluctant than workers and farmers to introduce means-tested or flat-rate pensions. Thus, the results indicate that the support for the present institutional pension policy model in Finland is strongest among the middle strata. But the results also indicate that this support is greatly dependent on benefit form, and when debating on the class basis of the Scandinavian universalism, we must be more explicit in specifying which aspects of universalism are at stake.