Assessing the Effect of Deservingness Cues on Tolerance for Administrative Burdens

Beneficiaries of public programs must overcome several administrative challenges. Given what we know about the politics of the welfare state, it seems likely that the public's willingness to support reductions in burdens may be associated with the characteristics of potential policy targets including their life circumstances and their race/ethnicity. To learn more about how attitudes about burden reductions are affected by these factors, a survey (N = 4177) was fielded that used an experiment introducing respondents to four vignettes presenting a woman with disabilities, a single mother, an able-bodied single woman, and an individual with opioid addiction seeking enrollment in Medicaid. The experiment also used racially/ethnically identifiable names of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian women. Respondents made clear distinctions based on individuals' life circumstances, favoring individuals with disabilities over single mothers, able-bodied single women, and individuals with opioid addiction, with the latter two consistently exhibiting the lowest levels of support. The race/ethnicity of the individual presented had very limited effects, and the effect of life circumstances consistently overshadowed those for race/ethnicity. Support for burden reductions was higher for re-enrollment than for initial enrollment. Future studies should further parse out the nuances between racial perceptions and burden tolerance.