Just Deserts: The Moral Economy of Welfare in Europe and the United States

• In Event: 568 - Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Groups, Trust, and Political Views

Abstract

This paper proposes a moral economic theory of the welfare state as a system of reciprocity in which each benefit balances rights and responsibilities. A complete understanding of social citizenship must account for both rights and responsibilities, and for how welfare state benefits calibrate the balance between them for different segments of the citizenry and different social risks. All benefits take into account that abilities and needs are unequally distributed: citizens’ contributions depend on their ability, while the benefits they can claim depend on their needs. These reciprocal arrangements are redistributive because the more able contribute more than the less able, and those with more extensive needs claim more than those who need less, but the balance between rights and responsibilities is determined very differently for various benefits.
I focus on social assistance (“welfare”), the means-tested, tax-financed benefit of last resort for the able-bodied, working-age poor. Based on extensive historical comparative analysis from the postwar period to the present and cross-national fieldwork covering national policies and their local implementation in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, I suggest that social assistance policy is about “just deserts,” as it allocates resources and responsibilities deservingness. Deservingness is the societal judgment of the causes of poverty on a spectrum between poverty as a result of individual failure and poverty as individual fate, that is, as causes beyond the control of the individual. It accounts for both the longitudinal and the cross-national variation in social assistance.

Author

• Sigrun Kahl, Yale University