What are the contributions in this paper?

If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and the authors will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

What are the future works in this paper?

In the text the authors speculated on some meaningful interpretations of their results regarding conditionality, but they would like to stress that they need further testing in future research, since their study is only one among two on the issue of conditionality which they know of. In their view, the future legitimacy of state welfare in European countries does not revolve solely around the deservingness criterion of identity. Here also, the future legitimacy and character of the European welfare states might be recognized in the present-day US welfare state. To this can be added their findings concerning European uniformity regarding the deservingness rank ordering of groups of needy people.

What is the common reason why the public would be more solidaristic towards elderly people?

Their hypothesis was that the public would be most solidaristic towards elderly people, closely followed by sick and disabled people, next there would be the solidarity towards unemployed people, and solidarity towards immigrants would be lowest.

What is the effect of living in a more affluent context?

living in a more affluent context makes people more easygoing when it comes to sharing with those who are less fortunate.

Why are older unemployed people more deserving than disabled people?

For instance, usually, older unemployed people and disabled unemployed people are seen more as deserving than unemployed people as a group, because they will be less blamed personally for their neediness, and because their situation concerns social risks the authors can all be confronted with (van Oorschot, 1998; Saunders, 2002).

What is the risk of this kind of discussion and ensuing policy measures?

There may be a risk that this kind of discussion and ensuing policy measures ultimately puts ever more pressure on the solidarity towards immigrants, since it stimulates thinking in terms of ‘Us versus Them’.

Why is conditionality higher in poorer countries?

The fact that conditionality is higher in poorer countries might point to a ‘national burden’ or ‘fiscal burden’ effect, which the authors found to play a rolein another study on the European public’s solidarity towards needy groups (van Oorschot et al., 2005; see also Hills, 2002).

Why is the image of unemployed people more positive?

As the authors pointed out earlier, the popular image of unemployed people tends to be more positive when unemployment is high, leading to lesser conditionality.

Why is it often found that religious, Christian people are more solidaristic towards needy people?

It is often found that religious, Christian people are more solidaristic towards needy people than nonreligious persons (because of the Christian dogma about ‘loving thy neighbour’)

What is the important determinant of people’s attitudes towards poor or otherwise needy?

A fact is that in all empirical deservingness studies on the topic, perceived personal responsibility or control stands out as the most important determinant of people’s attitudes towards poor or otherwise needy people.

What is the link between the fact that rightist people tend to be more conditional?

The fact that rightist people tend to be more conditional may be related to the more meritocratic and less egalitarian character of right-wing ideology.

What is the effect of living in a country where Protestantism plays a larger role?

A second relatively strong effect is that living in a country where Protestantism plays a larger role makes people less conditional.

(Open Access) Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states (2006) | Wim van Oorschot

Tilburg University

Making the difference in social Europe

van Oorschot, W.J.H.

Published in:

Journal of European Social Policy

Publication date:

2006

Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal

Citation for published version (APA):

van Oorschot, W. J. H. (2006). Making the difference in social Europe: Deservingness perceptions among

citizens of European welfare states.

Journal of European Social Policy

(1), 23-42.

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Journal of European Social Policy

DOI: 10.1177/0958928706059829

2006; 16; 23 Journal of European Social Policy

Wim van Oorschot

welfare states

Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions among citizens of European

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Social welfare policy cannot be fully understood

without recognizing that it is fundamentally a set

of symbols that try to differentiate between the

deserving and undeserving poor.

(Handler and Hasenfeld, 1991: 11)

Introduction

Early poor laws, such as the British Poor Law of

1834, distinguished between those categories of

poor people who were seen to be deserving of relief

– aged, sick and infirm people, children – and those

who were regarded as undeserving – unemployed

people, idle paupers, those capable of work

(Golding and Middleton, 1982; Waxman, 1983;

Katz, 1989; Geremek, 1997). Still, present-day

welfare states, with their protection schemes and

services going way beyond the early poor-law

systems in terms of coverage and generosity, treat

different groups of needy people differently. For

some groups, social protection is more easily acces-

sible, more generous, longer lasting, and/or less

subject to reciprocal obligations, than for other

groups. Just a few examples make this clear: it is

usually the case that elderly people and disabled

people can rely more strongly on less stigmatizing

benefits than, for instance, unemployed people; in

many countries widows are better protected by

national benefit schemes than are divorced women;

mostly, core workers can rely on more generous and

comprehensive social-insurance schemes than can

peripheral workers; and job-seeking obligations

attached to benefit receipt are usually more relaxed

for older people and single parents.

Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions

among citizens of European welfare states

Wim van Oorschot*, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Article

Oaks and New Delhi, DOI: 10.1177/0958928706059829 http://esp.sagepub.com

Summary Welfare states treat different groups of needy people differently. Such differential

rationing may reflect various considerations of policymakers, who act in economic, political and

cultural contexts. This article aims at contributing to a theoretical and empirical understanding of

the popular cultural context of welfare rationing. It examines European public perceptions of the

relative deservingness of four needy groups (elderly people, sick and disabled people, unemployed

people, and immigrants). Hypotheses, deduced from a literature review, are tested against data from

the 1999/2000 European Values Study survey. It is found that Europeans share a common and

fundamental deservingness culture: across countries and social categories there is a consistent

pattern that elderly people are seen as most deserving, closely followed by sick and disabled people;

unemployed people are seen as less deserving still, and immigrants as least deserving of all.

Conditionality is greater in poorer countries, in countries with lower unemployment, and in coun-

tries where people have less trust in fellow citizens and in state institutions. At the national level

there is no relation with welfare regime type or welfare spending. Individual differences in condi-

tionality are determined by several socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics, as well as by

certain features of the country people live in.

Key words culture, deservingness, Europe, public opinion, welfare state

* Author to whom correspondence should be sent: Wim van Oorschot, Cultural Studies Department, Tilburg

University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. [email: w.v.oorschot@uvt.nl]

at Universiteit van Tilburg on November 29, 2007 http://esp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Such differential treatment in social policy may

reflect various considerations of policymakers.

These may be economic (less protection for less

productive groups, Holliday, 2000); political (better

protection for groups with stronger lobbies,

Baldwin, 1990); and they may be cultural (better

protection for ‘our kind of’ people, or for ‘well-

behaving’ people, Deacon, 2002). Obviously,

policy-makers who are rationing welfare rights and

obligations act in an economic, political and cul-

tural context. A large academic literature now exists

on the economic and political factors affecting

welfare policy making (e.g., Barr, 1992; Esping-

Andersen, 1996; Pierson, 2001), but only recently

has the analysis of cultural influences received more

attention (Chamberlayne et al., 1999; Lockhart,

2001; Pfau-Effinger, 2002).

This article aims at contributing to an under-

standing of the popular cultural context of welfare

rationing, by examining European public percep-

tions of the relative deservingness of needy groups,

as well as variations in conditionality among

Europeans. This is not to suggest that public percep-

tions and opinions would always have a direct effect

upon policy making, if at all. The growing literature

on this issue suggests that there are some examples

of direct effects of public opinion on social policy

making, but mostly effects are indirect, through a

‘median voter’ mechanism, media debates, or lobby

group activities. In these ways public opinion may

set and limit political agendas, and offer or with-

hold legitimizing support for policies (Page and

Shapiro, 1983; Burstein, 1998; Manza et al., 2002).

In order to form a longer-term cultural context for

policy making, public opinions, perceptions and

attitudes must be rooted rather deeply, be relatively

widespread and be stable over time. In this article

we find evidence that this is the case regarding

European public perceptions of the relative deserv-

ingness of needy groups.

The article examines public deservingness percep-

tions by analysing the degree to which citizens of

European welfare states show a different solidaris-

tic attitude towards four different groups of needy

people: elderly people, sick and disabled people,

unemployed people, and immigrants. Using data

from the 1999/2000 European Values Study survey,

we set out to answer as a first question what the

public’s deservingness rank ordering of the four

groups is. In other words, to what degree the public

feels an informal solidarity towards each of these

groups, and what is each group’s relative position

on the solidarity scale. A second question is: How

fundamental is the rank ordering? Does it differ

(much) between European countries, or between

various social categories of their populations, or

not? Apart from the rank order itself, it is interest-

ing to analyse to what degree people actually do

make a difference between the four groups. The

solidarity of those people who do apparently attach

greater importance to making a distinction is more

conditional than that of those who are more equally

solidaristic towards all four groups, and who are

more relaxed about deservingness differences.

Finally, how could individual differences in condi-

tionality be explained? Does people’s structural

position makes a difference here, or their cultural

values and attitudes, and does it matter in which

type of country and welfare state they live?

However, before analysing these questions we

will review the literature on how and why the public

at large makes distinctions of deservingness, and we

will formulate some hypotheses about what we may

expect as outcomes of our analyses.

Making the difference . . .

How and why?

The fact that the public at large makes distinctions

between (support for) various groups of needy

people is well documented, especially regarding dif-

ferential public support for schemes directed at dif-

ferent target groups. Coughlin (1980) was the first

to carry out an international review of public

opinion studies on this issue, and found remarkable

stability over time, and similarity across countries.

All over modern, Western welfare states, in various

decades, the public was found to be most in favour

of social protection for old people, closely followed

by protection for sick and disabled people, while the

public supports schemes for needy families with

children less, schemes for unemployed people less

still, and supports social assistance schemes least of

all. More recent studies corroborate this ‘universal

dimension of support’, whether they use cross-

sectional data from different European countries

(Pettersen, 1995; Ullrich, 2000; Blekesaune and

Quadagno, 2003) or (time-series) data from single

countries, as for instance, the UK (Taylor-Gooby,

van Oorschot

Journal of European Social Policy 2006 16 (1)

at Universiteit van Tilburg on November 29, 2007 http://esp.sagepub.comDownloaded from

1985b; Hills, 2002), Finland and Denmark (Forma,

1997; Larsen, 2002), The Netherlands (van

Oorschot, 1998), Belgium (Debusscher and

Elchardus, 2003) and the Czech Republic (Rabusic

and Sirovatka, 1999). In some recent studies,

support for the social protection of immigrants is

also analysed, and found to be at the lower end of

the support dimension (van Oorschot, 1998;

Appelbaum, 2002). Apparently, the support dimen-

sion found by Coughlin is a truly universal element

in the popular welfare culture of present Western

welfare states. This culture may have a longer

history, because the support dimension coincides

strongly with the chronological order in which dif-

ferent types of schemes have been introduced in

these welfare states from the end of the 19th century

onwards: first the schemes for the most deserving

categories of old, sick and disabled people, then

family benefits and unemployment compensation,

and last (if at all) social assistance for the least

deserving (Kangas, 2000).

In order to understand differences in support,

some point to institutional factors, and others to

cultural factors, such as public images of target

groups and popular deservingness perceptions.

The institutional character of schemes seems to

play a role, since it is consistently found that univer-

sal schemes have higher support than selective

schemes (which even matters within the category of

highly supported pension schemes, Forma and

Kangas, 1997). Also, contributory insurance

schemes usually have higher support than tax-

financed schemes (Coleman, 1982; Ullrich, 2002).

These facts may be explained by people’s perceived

self-interest, because more people benefit from uni-

versal than from selective schemes (Wilson, 1987;

Skocpol, 1991; Blekesaune and Quadagno, 2003),

and paying contributions is associated more

strongly with building up a personal entitlement to

benefits than with paying general taxes. Instead of,

or in addition to, self-interest, trust may play a role,

because the public usually has less trust in the fair

operation of selective, means-tested schemes, than

in that of universal and contributory schemes.

Selective schemes tend to give more opportunity for

abuse (Alston and Dean, 1972; Overbye, 1999;

Ullrich, 2002), and their administrative practice

may be seen as less impartial (Rothstein, 2001).

Furthermore, support for a scheme may depend

upon people’s perceptions of its fiscal burden,

which is related to perceptions of the scheme’s gen-

erosity and its numbers of claimants (Kuklinski and

Quirk, 1997; Hills, 2002).

As for target groups, especially in the USA,

various studies have provided evidence that norma-

tive images of categories of poor people play an

important role in the support for welfare and social-

security schemes. Programmes targeted at groups

with a negative public image are less supported by

the public, and they more easily fall victim to

cutback measures, as is shown by Bendix Jensen

(2004) in his comparison of UK and Danish welfare

change of the last decade. There is very low support

for the highly selective American ‘welfare’ scheme

(now TANF), because people perceive that it is

mainly used by teen and single mothers (‘welfare

queens’), who are morally looked down upon, and

by those people who are assumed to be lazy, unreli-

able, and/or addicted to drugs and alcohol (Gordon,

2001; Rein, 2001). Programmes targeted at groups

with no negative images – such as widows, elderly

people, and physically disabled people – are well

supported by the American public (Williamson,

1974; Katz, 1989; Appelbaum, 2001; Huddy et al.,

2001). Gilens (1999) convincingly shows that there

is a strong racial element in ‘why Americans hate

welfare’: Americans tend to think that blacks are

more lazy and less responsible than whites, and that

therefore welfare is taken up mostly by black people

(see also Feagin, 1975; Nelson, 1999; Neubeck and

Casenave, 2001). Racial stereotyping is a central

element in the difference between American and

European public images of social-policy target

groups (Alesina and Glaeser, 2004). Instead of

images of the (black) poor, European studies have

concentrated more on public images of unemployed

people. (This may reflect the different outcomes of

the American versus the European social models:

the first generates more poverty, the second more

unemployment.) What is consistently found is that

images tend to be negative. There is rather wide-

spread doubt about unemployed people’s willing-

ness to work and about proper use of benefits

(Furnham, 1982; Golding and Middleton, 1982;

Halvorsen, 2002), even in a universalistic welfare

state such as Sweden (Furaker and Blomsterberg,

2002). And when people are asked to compare

unemployed people to disabled people (Maassen

and Goede, 1989), or to employed people (Ester

and Dekker, 1986), the unemployed are seen as

Making the difference in social Europe

Journal of European Social Policy 2006 16 (1)

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Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states

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References

The truly disadvantaged : the inner city, the underclass, and public policy

The New Politics of the Welfare State

The Truly Disadvantaged

Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy.

Effects of Public Opinion on Policy

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Frequently Asked Questions (14)

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

Q2. What are the future works in this paper?

Q3. What is the common reason why the public would be more solidaristic towards elderly people?

Q4. What is the effect of living in a more affluent context?

Q5. Why are older unemployed people more deserving than disabled people?

Q6. What is the main reason why the institutional character of schemes seems to play a role?

Q7. What is the risk of this kind of discussion and ensuing policy measures?

Q8. Why is conditionality higher in poorer countries?

Q9. Why is the image of unemployed people more positive?

Q10. Why is it often found that religious, Christian people are more solidaristic towards needy people?

Q11. What is the important determinant of people’s attitudes towards poor or otherwise needy?

Q12. Where is the support dimension found in some recent studies?

Q13. What is the link between the fact that rightist people tend to be more conditional?

Q14. What is the effect of living in a country where Protestantism plays a larger role?