The intergenerational social contract is an implied support agreement between society’s providers and dependents. As context for the politics of retrenchment, we evaluate individual attitudes towards state spending on children and older adults from twenty-seven countries in the 2001 International Social Survey Program. Most respondents agree that it is the government’s responsibility to provide childcare for everyone who wants it and a decent standard of living for the aged. This finding holds across countries and welfare regimes, except the liberal welfare states. A weighted multinomial logistic regression considers the probability of contract orientation on individual, household, state-context factors. Women are more likely to have an intergenerational orientation. Compared to an intergenerational orientation, higher age increases the odds of an “older adult only” orientation and a “family/market” reliance orientation opposing support for either age group. Never-married respondents are less likely to have family/market and older adult only orientations. People with young children in the home are relatively less likely to favor family/market or eldercare only orientations. Less education is associated with an intergenerational orientation. Esping-Andersen (2002a), Daniel and Ivatts (1998), Leira (2002) and others argue the social contract should be reworked to incorporate more spending on children. According to our results, there may be greater receptivity to a focus on “functional solidarity,” which emphasizes needs and obligations throughout the life-course, rather than singling out any particular age-group. Thus, the intergenerational social contract shows promise for framing public policy discussions of retrenchment.
