Street-level Bureaucrats' and the General Public's Deservingness Perceptions of Social Assistance Recipients in Finland

Perceptions of deservingness are crucial when we attempt to explain public support for welfare policies or try to understand the development of modern welfare states. These perceptions also reveal the status of a particular population group in society and the social cohesion between marginalized groups and the general public. In this article, we are concerned about whether perceptions of the deservingness of social assistance recipients vary between different street-level bureaucrat groups, citizens and those individuals who have received social assistance or whose family members have been recipients of social assistance at some stage of their life. We focus on the nature of the impact of various individual level factors in these perceptions. The studied street-level bureaucrats are social workers in municipalities, deacons of the Church of Finland and benefit officials of the Social Security Institution of Finland. Two nationwide surveys among street-level bureaucrats (N = 2,124) and citizens (N = 1,883) are used. Descriptive statistics and rank ordered logistic regression are utilized. According to the results, street-level bureaucrats and the general public perceive social assistance recipients in quite a positive way. However, there are clear differences between and within these groups. Street-level bureaucrats' attitudes towards social assistance recipients are more positive than those among the public. However, benefit officials have a more critical stance on the deservingness of social assistance recipients than social workers and deacons. Those who have received social assistance are more positive than those who have not had these experiences. Age, education and political identification further explain the attitudes of bureaucrats and citizens.