Does a more generous welfare state make people happier and increase their lifesatisfaction? Available empirical research gives a clear and positive answer to thisquestion. This goes counter to many arguments that the welfare state creates a cultureof dependency, leads to heavy-handed bureaucratic intrusions into private life, createsproblems concerning personal integrity, is bad for economic growth, impliesstigmatization of the poor, and crowds out civil society and voluntarism. Thiscounterintuitive result is explained by to which degree social programs are universalin the coverage and structure. Four common misunderstandings of universal welfarestates are discussed and refuted: This it is too costly for the economy, that it can notbe combined with individual choice, that it does not redistribute in favour of the poorand that it should be detrimental to economic growth. Using a “social mechanism”approach, it is argued that the relation between subjective well-being and universalwelfare states operates in a complicated causal pattern with two other variables, thedegree of corruption and the level of social trust in society. This approach is used toexplain why empirically, countries tend to cluster so that countries with large andmostly universal welfare state programs also have low levels of corruption, a highdegree of social trust, and high levels of happiness and social well-being. And viceversa, why countries with smaller welfare systems tend to be higher on corruption,have lower levels of social trust, and lower levels of social well-being.
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