Martin Fritz


Martin Fritz is a sociologist at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Germany. In his current position he studies labour market and employment changes as well as trends in social-ecological attitudes within the project 'Mentalitis in Flux' funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. He completed his PhD at the University of Bonn in Germany. The topic was the comparative analysis of labour markets and job quality among part-time employees in European countries. He also worked at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne, Germany, where he was a researcher at the European Data Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (EUROLAB). His research aims to contribute to the debate about degrowth and postgrowth societies and deals with the intersections between the three fields of 1) work and employment, 2) welfare and 3) environmental sustainability. Working mainly as an empirical researcher he analyzes macro trends and structures from a cross-country perspective as well as attitudes, social class structures and other micro level characteristics using international social survey data. He is a co-founder of the International Research and Policy Network on Sustainable Welfare, published a book about the destandardization of employment in Europe (with Max Koch) and a book on the job quality of part-time employees. His articles appear in journals such as Ecological Economics, Global Environmental Change, Sustainability, the Journal of Social Policy and others, also in German journals.




Papers Published in World Economics:


Tackling the Double Injustice: How Citizens Evaluate Climate and Welfare Policies

Ambitious climate policies have distributional consequences. These require countervailing social policies to keep climate targets acceptable for the electorate. This article analyses data from the European Social Survey as to whether attitudes in relation to climate and welfare policies converge or diverge. It distinguishes four types of social-ecological attitudes: ‘Synergy’ or support for both kinds of policies; ‘Green crowding-out’ where support for climate policies is not accompanied by approval of welfare; ‘Red crowding-out’ where support for welfare coincides with a rejection of climate policies; Rejection of both types of policies. There are clear differences at country level. While synergy between both kinds of attitudes is most widespread in countries with an already established welfare state, the pattern of red crowding-out predominates in countries having an economy with high fossil-dependence. At individual level, persons expressing synergy for climate and welfare policies are well educated, young, with left-wing political beliefs and live in households with above-average incomes. Individuals who reject both kinds of policies are older, less educated, live in households with below-average incomes and politically orient to the right.

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