Does population ageing change pension reform attitudes? A survey experiment on political knowledge, ideology, and preferences

Abstract

Do increased pressures to reform due to the financial crisis or population ageing erode welfare state support? Surprisingly, our knowledge of how individuals change their attitudes in hard times is still limited. Relying on a survey experiment in a representative German online survey, this chapter exogenously manipulates the perceived pressure to reform (due to an ageing society). It shows that people indeed change their reform preferences when faced with an ageing society: the strong opposition to increasing the retirement age decreases. Further analyses reveal that not all groups within society react to increased reform pressures in the same way: political knowledge but also political partisanship do moderate the strength and the direction of the attitude change.