Perceived welfare deservingness of needy people in transition countries: Comparative evidence from the Life in Transition Survey 2016

Abstract

Transition to the market economy and the related restructuring of welfare systems has produced new vulnerabilities in the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia while simultaneously aggravating the existing ones. Given the limited fiscal capacities of the transition countries, this brings to the fore the issue of which of the new and old vulnerable groups of people are considered to be deserving of public support. Using data from the third round of the Life in Transition survey (2016), this article explores the perceived welfare deservingness of five groups: the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed, the working poor and families with children. We find that with some exceptions, the hierarchy of deservingness of these groups is similar to that systematically identified in Western welfare states. However, there is also a large variation in the deservingness levels across countries, some of which appear to be related to the differences in the levels of economic development. We also find that in transition countries, individual self-interest and ideological predispositions largely have the same effects on people’s deservingness perceptions as those found in Western welfare states in previous studies.