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The purpose of this paper is to empirically test two opposing theoretical hypotheses from research literature: low quality of public education boosts support for public education; and low quality of public education weakens support for public education.

The authors use microdata from 27 post-communist countries over a period of five years. This study uses two outcome variables in order to capture the level of support for public education: the willingness to elevate investments in public education to an important policy priority; and the willingness to pay more taxes to improve public healthcare. A series of logistic regressions is used to find how the outcome variable is influenced by six dimensions of the quality of the public education system.

The main finding is that a lower quality of public education strengthens the willingness of citizens to make investments into public education by: making it a political priority for the government; and through a professed increased willingness to pay more taxes towards improving public education. These findings remain valid for both years of investigation and for both EU and non-EU samples. In contrast, the authors could not find support for the hypothesis that postulates that a lower quality of public education will reduce support for public education.

The main implication of these findings is that despite the increases in availability of private schooling opportunities, the citizens of post-communist countries have not abandoned their support for public education. Even if citizens of post-communist countries believe that public education is no longer of an appropriately high quality, they continue to support the provision of resources to it in order to improve on the current situation.

The current low quality of public education can be seen as providing an impetus for encouraging support for public education.

In terms of policy-making, the findings demonstrate the opportunity to shore up public support for further reforms in public- education in post-communist countries.

The current education policy research literature is silent about the direction of the effect of low quality public education on the willingness to provide support for public education. Against this background, this is the first study which empirically tested whether quality of public education affect willingness to support it. Covering a period of five years, the authors test the above-postulated hypotheses using a diverse sample of 27 post-communist countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors which may explain support for redistribution for different groups of the needy in 28 post-communist countries.

Using a cross-country survey (n=25,845), the authors evaluate preferences for redistribution to the elderly, the disabled, families with children, the working poor, and the unemployed.

People in post-communist countries made the distinction between deserving groups of the needy – the aged, the disabled, and families with children, and undeserving groups – the unemployed and the working poor. Among the individual-level factors, adherence to equality and attributing poverty to structural problems increased the probability of supporting redistribution. Among country-level factors, the authors’ results stress the positive influence of income inequality on support for redistribution for all groups of the needy under investigation. Notably, the authors did not find a negative influence of the business cycle on support for the working poor and unemployed.

This is the first paper that examines support for the needy in a diverse sample of 28 post-communist countries. The findings will help policy-makers and social administrators to better understand factors influencing support for redistribution toward different groups of the needy.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the effects of interpersonal and institutional trust on welfare state support in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU).

The authors use micro-data from two rounds of a multinational survey conducted in these countries in 2010 and 2016. The outcome variable of interest is the willingness to pay more taxes to support the welfare state. The authors define the welfare state broadly, and focus on support for three main domains of the welfare state, namely, support for the needy, public healthcare and public education. Binomial regression is used to establish influence of interpersonal and institutional trust on welfare state support.

The authors find that both interpersonal and institutional trust have positive influences on strengthening support for the welfare state against a number of alternative explanations for public support for the welfare state. These positive effects remain the same for all three domains under investigation, namely, helping the needy, public healthcare and public education. Furthermore, these positive effects were observed both in the relatively less developed countries of the FSU and in the more developed Eastern European countries. Moreover, the positive effects of interpersonal and institutional trust on support for the needy, public healthcare and public education were found to grow over time.

The findings indicate that the benefits of nurturing social capital will likely be substantial. Decision-makers, politicians, welfare state administrators and multinational founders (e.g. the UN and World Bank) should acknowledge the role played by trust in influencing the citizenry’s support for the allocation of financial resources toward the development and maintenance of the welfare state. The findings imply that welfare state reforms could prove be more effective within a social context where levels of trust are high. Thus, special attention should be paid to initiatives aimed at developing strategies to build trust.

Social welfare reforms in post-communist transitional countries may fail without active strategies aimed at nurturing institutional trust. One way to nurture institutional trust is through making additional efforts at enhancing the levels of accountability and transparency within a society as well as through increasing citizen engagement. Another way to build increased levels of trust is to take part in a variety of initiatives in good governance put forth by multinational initiatives.

As far as the authors know, this is the first paper which studies effect of interpersonal and institutional trust on support of the welfare state using a large and diverse sample of 27 countries over the period of five years. This is the first study which focuses on post-communist countries where trust is inherently low.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of a variety of levels of education, namely, high school, vocational and university education, on the probability of being employed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The data are from two waves of the Life-in-Transition Survey that covers 29 post-communist transitional countries. The number of binary logistic models is estimated to quantify the effects of different types of education on the likelihood of being employed, while controlling for different sets of covariates.

The findings reveal that the effect of employment associated with university education is higher than that of vocational education, which in turn is higher than that of high school education. However, the differences between the effects of the various levels of education are not considerable. Any specific level of education is always associated with a higher effect in Eastern Europe as compared to the former Soviet Union. The effect of education is also found to be higher for females than for males. In the former Soviet Union, the positive effect of university and vocational education on employment is found to go down with age.

This is the first study which compares effect of different types of education on probability of being employed on a diverse sample of 29 post-communist countries over the period of five years.