Investigating the Welfare Deservingness of Single Mothers: Public Image and Deservingness Perceptions in Hungary

Abstract

The literature on single mothers’ welfare deservingness is dominated by analyses carried out in Anglo-Saxon countries. Those analyses tend to point to an undeserving public image of single mothers. This negative perception is often explained by the identity gap between middle-class voters and poor single mothers, which is partly fuelled by conservative family values in mainstream society. This study investigates the issue in Hungary, where the government has strongly promoted traditional family ideals and significantly increased the support for affluent two-parent families in the past decade. First, the study explores the public image of single mothers based on open-ended and closed-ended survey questions. Second, it measures the perceived deservingness of the group based on five criteria (control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need) (van Oorschot 2000) by using the same open-ended question data and a series of other survey data. The results show that single mothers have a coherent deserving public image in Hungary: they have a hard life, do everything to make a living for their family, and lack appropriate financial and emotional support. Results, however, also show that public attitudes are in line with the government’s conservative family policy, and there is, indeed, an identity gap between single-mother families and the public. Nevertheless, this identity gap is not enough to generate negative welfare attitudes towards single mothers because they are perceived as deserving regarding the other four deservingness criteria.

How Does the Content of Deservingness Criteria Differ for More and Less Deserving Target Groups? An Analysis of Polish Online Debates on Refugees and Families with Children

“…Powerful hybrids of deservingness criteria are also used in both debates. Many of them are identical to those found by other researchers, such as ‘the deserving refugee’ (Nielsen et al , 2020) or ‘lazy, non-working mother living off welfare’ (Herke, 2020). My study also revealed other amalgams, such as the figure of ‘Poles’ needs taking priority,’ which turned out to be a salient mix of identity and need criteria, the application of which results in the full denial of refugees’ deservingness.…”

“…This was done in Poland, which employs a hybrid welfare state model and has witnessed contentious identity politics (Lendvai-Bainton and Szelewa, 2020), potentially increasing the complexity and polarisation of opinions on deservingness (Gugushvili and van Oorschot, 2020). This analysis contributes to a growing body of qualitative research about how in practice people make deservingness claims (Herke, 2020; Heuer and Zimmermann, 2020; Laenen, 2020; Nielsen et al , 2020; Osipovic, 2015).…”

“…Poles’ adherence to these legacies is an aspect of strong sociopolitical cleavages in Poland which are also present in opinions on deservingness (Gugushvili and van Oorschot, 2020). Furthermore, processes described in the stream of analyses on the current right-wing populist shift in social policy (Herke, 2020; Kissová, 2018) apply to Poland, too. They entail active reshaping of deservingness opinions including appreciation of large middle-class families and the downgrading of immigrants (Lendvai-Bainton and Szelewa, 2020).…”

“…In addition to the development of public perceptions about deservingness into a precise and quantitatively measurable concept, qualitative works on the topic have also been published (Herke, 2020; Heuer and Zimmermann, 2020; Laenen, 2020; Nielsen et al , 2020; Osipovic, 2015). They show that when people talk freely about who deserves what in a welfare state, they apply CARIN criteria, albeit in a highly tangled form that exhibits various, context-specific manifestations of the criteria, which ultimately are applied differently to different target groups.…”

Deservingness for "Family 500 +" Benefit in Poland: Qualitative Study of Internet Debates

“…In their recent study Heuer and Zimmerman (2020) found that respondents emphasize identity (as well as the need and social investment) as the main deservingness criteria that are applied with regards to families. People who stereotypically violate the dominant social norms, for example single mothers, are more likely to be found undeserving (Herke, 2019).…”