2024/12/17 by Giuliano Bonoli, Mia Gandenberger, Carlo Knotz · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Healthcare innovation and challenges #Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/13501763.2024.2438107
openalex publication_date 2024/12/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Research on perceptions of deservingness has so far mainly focused on cash benefits. We correct this imbalance by studying public attitudes towards access to social investment services, specifically, subsidised childcare. Based on the well-established corpus of deservingness research and recent work on varieties of social investment, we expect the traditional deservingness criteria to matter and for results to vary across countries. To test our argument, we rely on an original survey experiment conducted in 2021 in six Western countries (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and the USA). We find that cross-national patterns of responses broadly reflect the categorisation of three types of social investments, that is, inclusive, stratified and targeted social investment. Further, we find that some of the well-known determinants of deservingness perceptions play an important role in the attribution of priorities of parents who need childcare: most clearly need and identity (operationalised with the parents’ nationality and their length of residency). This is true in all six countries covered. We conclude that patterns of deservingness perceptions to subsidised childcare services are determined by a mix of institutional factors (that differ across welfare regimes) and more fundamental attitudes towards helping those in need.