ABSTRACT Informal caregiving, meaning taking health-related care of an older and/or disabled person in the personal network, often has consequences for paid work. Classically, scholars focus on two strategies of informal caregivers to adapt employment: stopping to work and reducing working hours. Two other plausible, but neglected, strategies may similarly have career consequences, namely changing jobs and becoming self-employed. First, we empirically assess whether experiencing a work-care conflict is a condition for choosing a work adaption strategy. Second, we theoretically and empirically take a life course (age at start of caregiving episode) and gender perspective on strategies to adapt paid work. We use detailed retrospective data on informal caregiving in the Netherlands (N = 3,673 caregiving episodes of 2,112 caregivers). Applying multilevel logistic regression analysis, we find that caregivers who felt that they had difficulties combining work and care, were more likely to choose any strategy. Especially caregivers who started to provide care at a young age (24 years or younger) were likely to reduce working hours or change jobs. When starting care in the early family formation stage (25–34 years), women were more likely to reduce working hours, whereas men were more likely to stop working in early middle age (45–54 years).

ABSTRACT The classic gap between lower and higher social classes in their likelihood to vote for radical left parties (RLPs) persists to this day. Prior studies showed that economic and political grievances predict support for the radical left, but they largely neglected to address whether the working class is more likely to vote for RLPs because they are economically and politically dissatisfied. This study, therefore, examines the explanatory role of economic and political grievances. It also examines whether the class cleavage in RLP support depends on a country's economic performance in terms of wealth, unemployment and income inequality. European Social Survey data on 19 countries between 2002 and 2018 are analysed using three-level logistic regression models. The results replicate that people in lower social classes are more likely to vote for RLPs than those in higher ones. They do so because they are more dissatisfied with the economy, democracy and, particularly, income inequality. Against expectations, class voting for the radical left is not conditional on macroeconomic performance. Yet, RLPs turn out to be more electorally successful as a result of economic and political grievances in times of economic prosperity, suggesting that feelings of relative deprivation spur radical left voting.

ABSTRACT This study revisits the crowding in hypothesis and contributes to the literature in two ways. First, in addition to total social spending, we examine whether different types of social spending increase social capital among their target groups. Second, we distinguish within- from between -country effects of social spending. Data from the European Social Survey are analysed with logistic multilevel regression models. We analyse two indicators of informal social capital: having social contact with friends, family or work colleagues and having anyone to discuss intimate and personal matters with. The results show that the more governments spend on social protection, the more likely people within those countries are to have social and intimate contact. The results also demonstrate that within-country effects of the types of social spending on having social contact disappear once we control for unobserved heterogeneity between countries. Yet, within countries with higher social spending on sickness/health care, old age and social exclusion, we find that these specific expenditures facilitate intimate contact among people in bad health, retirees and people who are having difficulties living on their present income, respectively. Overall, the crowding in hypothesis is supported. We conclude that it is important to examine the types of social spending and to distinguish within- and between-country effects.