Introduction: the interaction between welfare deservingness and welfare policy

Abstract

Chapter 1 argues that Boulding's statement that society lays a modest table at which all can sup and a high table at which the deserving can feast is an excellent one-sentence summary of public opinion and public policy on social welfare. Opinion-wise, past research has shown that although citizens consider most of their fellow citizens to be deserving of social welfare, some particular groups notably the old, sick and disabled have always been seen as more deserving by the general public than the able-bodied, working-aged unemployed. Policy-wise, welfare states have throughout history offered somewhat more generous and less conditional social protection to those groups that are deemed most deserving by the public. The book's core proposition is that this congruence between public opinion and public policy in the social welfare domain is no coincidence, but canbe read as the product of a reciprocal relationship between popular deservingness opinions and welfare state policies.