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Knowledge of public policy and perceived positive impact of the

welfare benefits system- Asia’s Social Policy Symposium 27-29

March 2006 The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Chack-kie WongKwong-leungTang

Hung WongThe Chinese University of Hong K

ong

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The issue

Theoretically, the working-class anger is usually directed to ‘undeserving poor’ of the welfare poor.

More than half of the welfare poor in HK are older people (Table 1) who are supposed NOT to fall into the ‘undeserving poor’ category because of inadequate retirement protection in HK.

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Table 1 Recipients of welfare benefits system in HK

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Major Recipient group % % % % %

Old aged 59.3 56.3 52.8 50.7 50.6

Disabled & sick 13.8 13.7 13.2 13.1 13.7

Single-parents 11.4 11.9 12.6 13.1 13.5

Unemployed 10.2 12.8 15.9 16.7 14.4

Low-income 3.6 3.7 4.0 4.9 6.0

Others 1.6 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.8

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Issue

The allegation of ‘free lunch’ and welfarism’ on those depending upon welfare benefits, especially the immigrants from mainland China and the unemployed welfare poor.

Why is there such an allegation about the welfare poor? Due to 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and 2000 global

economic downturn, many lower-income people in HK now find their household incomes even lower than those of welfare recipients (Social Welfare Department, 1998).

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Research question

We would like to know, whether the knowledge of public policy (the older people as the largest welfare recipient group as the proxy) helps in fostering the perception of a positive image of the welfare benefits system

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Literature Review

A) Public perception towards the welfare poor

Public perception of the welfare poor are always unfriendly, especially toward the undeserving poor (Coley, Kuta and Chase-Landsale, 2000;Taylor-Goob

y,1985; Wong, 1997).

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Literature Review (1)

Three possible explanations of the ‘blaming the welfare poor’ phenomenon

1. ‘Working-class anger’ Resentful of people with similar backgrounds who

‘choose’ not to work and receive welfare benefits from the state (Canna, Hasenfeld,Cnaan & Rafferty, 1993; Cnaan,1989; Taylor-Gooby-1985). The allegations of ‘free lunch’ and ‘welfarism’ can

be suggested to reflect the ‘working anger’.

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Literature Review (1)

2. Associated welfare dependency with pathological conditions, such as poverty, out-off-wedlock birth, abortion and crime (Cocca, 2002; Niskane, 1996). Therefore, the welfare poor are not only morally

wrong, but they also have socially undesirable behaviors.

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Literature Review (1)

3. Policy reform initiatives which tighten benefits and impose conditions for entitlements, reinforce the image of welfare abuse Welfare poor are scroungers who need to face puniti

ve measures to keep in line with normative standards of behaviors (Haworth and Manzi,1999).

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Literature Review (2)

Knowledge of public policies

1. Empirical studies show that people display different extents of knowledge of public policies. There are high levels of knowledge (Abravanel

& Cunningham, 2002; Blinders & Krueger, 2004; Zedlewski & Holland,2003; Taylor-Gooby, Hastie & Broomley, 2003). However, they did not include a study of the effect of polic

y knowledge.

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Literature Review (2)

2. The welfare recipients with limiting knowledge and use of program provision, placing them at risk for penalties or benefit termination (Smith, Paul & Nina, 2002)

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Literature Review (2)

3. Very few studies that look at the relationship of how important policy knowledge is for human behaviors.

Abravanel and Cunningham’s (2002) study finds some association between awareness of the law, recognition of conduct perceived to contradict the law, and willingness to respond to such conduct.

Blinder and Krueger (2004) find that knowledge of policy-specific economic issues influence opinions on a number of issues such as willingness to cut social security benefits and raise minimum wages.

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Research Method

A random sampling telephone poll was conducted in May 2005 in HK.

A successful sample of 1006 adult respondents with aged 18 or above. A response rate of 50.4% was obtained.

Three questions were asked to check whether respondents know the knowledge about the welfare benefits system of Hong Kong

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Findings

Table 2 shows the respondents’ knowledge of the welfare benefits system.

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Table 2 Respondents’ knowledge of the welfare benefits system

1. Which is the largest group having welfare benefits nowadays?

Right answer: elderly

19.5%

(N=1006)

2. If welfare recipients want to consult private doctors, do they need to pay by themselves?

Right answer: need to pay by themselves

58.2%

(N=1006)

3. Nowadays, what is the sum a single adult welfare recipients gets (including all allowances) in one month?

Right answer: about $2,600 to $2,800

31.3%

(N=1006)

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Findings

A cross tabulation with personal characteristics finds that only respondents of lower household income and welfare recipients were more likely to know that elderly people constituted the largest recipient group.

If the three questions were taken into account, the respondents did not possess accurate knowledge about the welfare benefits system.

Even the welfare poor did not exactly know the entitled amount of a single-adult welfare poor.

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Findings In Table 3, it shows the correlations of

policy knowledge and perceived positive impact of the welfare benefit system.

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Table 3 Correlations of policy knowledge and perceived positive impact of the welfare benefit system (%)

Narrow the rich-poor gap

Solve poverty problem

Prevent people from committing crime

Express concern and care of society

All 20.0 25.4 55.3 79.2

The largest group having welfare benefits

17.9 23.7 52.6 77.0

Wrong answer 17.9 23.7 52.6 77.0

Right answer 28.6 32.7 66.7 88.2

x² 11.633*** 7.003* 12.561** 12.011**

Need to pay for consulting private doctors

Wrong answer 20.5 24.5 56.7 77.4

Right answer 19.6 26.1 54.4 80.4

x² 0.163 1.385 1.26 1.411

The sum single adult welfare recipient has in a month

Wrong answer 18.6 24.6 54.7 78.7

Right answer 22.9 27.4 56.9 80.3

x² 5.976* 1.001 1.069 3.136

*p<.05 **p<.01 ***p<.001

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Findings

Only the knowledge of old age as the largest welfare poor group has statistically significant relationships with all four positive impact questions.

The ‘private-doctor question’ may be common-sense guesswork.

The ‘welfare-amount question’ is difficult to be right because the public debate about welfare dependency focused on the ‘welfare-amount’ of three-person households. We decide to use the knowledge of old age as the proxy for

knowledge of public policy for further statistical analysis

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Findings In Table 4, it shows the linear regression coefficients for pr

edicting respondents’ perceived positive impact of the welfare benefit system. We also add the following alternative variables into the

model: Dependent variable – all four variables of the positive im

pacts of the welfare benefits system (alpha .5735) Independent variables

Welfarism (6 questions, alpha .6280) Government responsibility (6 variables, alpha .6098) Dependency control (single variable – whether to seek welfare i

n case of financial difficulty) Causation of social problem (single variable, social vs non-soci

al causes of social problem) Kindness to the welfare poor (single variable – whether welfare

recipients can keep some money for emergency purposes) Together with personal characteristics of respondents

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Table 4 Linear regression coefficients for predicting respondents’ perceived positive

impact of the welfare benefits system (N=797)

All positive impact

R² .165***

Welfarism .035

Government responsibility .220***

Dependency control .114**

Knowledge of policy .104**

Causation of social problem -0.20

Kindness to the welfare poor .182***

Personal characteristics

Male (vs. female) -0.55

Age .071

Education -0.94*

Household income .010

Non-welfare recipients (vs. welfare recipients) -0.55

*p<.05 **p<.01 ***p<.001

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Findings

Knowledge of policy has significant relationship with all positive impact of the welfare system

Government responsibility with the strongest coefficients Kindness to the welfare poor also has significant relationshi

p The higher educated respondents with less positive impact

of the welfare benefits system In total, these significant variable and other insignificant var

iables accounted for 16.5% of variance of perceived positive impact of the welfare benefits system.

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Conclusion This study confirms the findings of earlier

research that citizens display different extent of public policy knowledge

Policy knowledge has a positive effect for fostering a positive image of the welfare benefits system

But surprisingly, education did not have positive effect on the perception of positive impacts of the welfare benefits system. This may indicate an ‘educated anger’ towards

the welfare poor, instead of a ‘working-class anger’.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, accurate knowledge is important to foster social harmony when it has contents favourable to the positive attitude of the welfare poor and the welfare benefits system

Need to inform the public with accurate and adequate knowledge about the welfare benefits system