Social image concerns and welfare take-up

Jana Friedrichsen, Tobias König and Renke Schmacker

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2018, vol. 168, 174-192

Abstract: Using a laboratory experiment, we present first evidence that social image concerns causally reduce the take-up of an individually beneficial transfer. Our design manipulates the informativeness of the take-up decision by varying whether transfer eligibility is based on ability or luck, and how the transfer is financed. We find that subjects avoid the inference both of being low-skilled (ability stigma) and of being willing to live off others (free-rider stigma). Using a placebo treatment, we exclude other explanations for the observed stigma effects. Although stigma reduces take-up, elicitation of political preferences reveals that only a minority of “taxpayers” vote for the public transfer.

Keywords: Stigma; Signaling; Redistribution; Non-take-up; Welfare program (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 H31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/231786/1/AV-Welfare-Stigma.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social image concerns and welfare take-up (2018)
Working Paper: Social Image Concerns and Welfare Take-Up (2018)
Working Paper: Social Image Concerns and Welfare Take-Up (2018)
Working Paper: Social image concerns and welfare take-up (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:231786

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().