Exploring the Varied Meanings of Welfare Deservingness: Using Correlational Class Analysis to Uncover Dutch Citizen’s Perceptions

Despite much research on citizens’ welfare deservingness considerations, the literature typically overlooks the diverse meanings individuals attribute to their stances on the issue. The same welfare deservingness stance may mean something fundamentally different across individuals, ranging from perceiving it as, e.g., an issue of economic redistribution to an issue of cultural concerns. This diversity in meanings has significant implications for our understanding of welfare solidarity and public attitudes towards redistribution. While recent qualitative studies have explored these nuances, this study offers an innovative quantitative approach to uncover the distinct meanings citizens attribute to their welfare deservingness considerations. Utilizing correlational class analysis on data from an original representative survey of Dutch citizens (n = 2,131), I uncover five distinct meanings: 1) conventional conservative-progressive; 2) (dis)trust of ethnic others; 3) economic (anti-)chauvinism; 4) moral economy; and 5) traditional-inclusive solidarity. These different meanings each include individuals with both lenient and strict stances on welfare deservingness. The social bases of these meanings differ substantively, as groups with distinct characteristics adhere to them, based on, differences in their, e.g., socioeconomic position, educational level, and political preferences. These findings reveal that different groups have fundamentally different things in mind when they think about the welfare deservingness of others. The implications of this study are discussed for the fields of social policy analysis, and more broadly for the fields of sociology and political science, as it provides a stepping stone for meaning-oriented research on public opinion more generally.