Suchergebnisse

In this study, we examine whether welfare deservingness judgements in the United Kingdom are affected by a bias against claimants from stigmatised social class backgrounds. In the United Kingdom, as in other countries, stereotypes of a perceived social 'underclass' are widespread. Political and media discourse frequently portrays members of this 'underclass' as lazy, feckless and not genuinely in need of support. Yet despite strong academic interest in perceived welfare deservingness, existing research has largely neglected the role of social class bias in deservingness judgements. To address this gap, we use a novel vignette experiment administered to a representative sample of British respondents to provide the first direct evidence of discrimination against welfare claimants with 'underclass' signifiers. We find that the British public are more likely to endorse a sanction against a claimant from an 'underclass' background than against an otherwise identical claimant from a less stigmatised class background. We also asked respondents to justify their decisions and, applying computational methods to analyse these free-text responses, we find that 'underclass' claimants are more likely to be blamed for violating the conditions of their benefit, while claimants from other class backgrounds are more often given the 'benefit of the doubt.' Our findings have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between social class background and public deservingness perceptions, and potentially for the differential treatment of claimants by the benefits system.

The objective of the study was to obtain reliable, representative and internationally comparable energy-related data using empirical surveys for the sectors "private households" and "trade, commerce and services" (referred to hereafter as the tertiary sector), which account for around 45% of final energy consumption in Germany. A degree of detail is targeted which goes beyond the level of whole sectors and which is underlaid with factors determining energy consumption based on sector-specific technical equipment. One aspect treated in more depth was the contribution of renewable energies, especially biomass, to energy supply. The experience gained with empirical instruments in these surveys should result in recommendations for the future so that reliable, up-to-date figures are available for both sectors at the lowest possible cost. A written survey was conducted in the private household sector in Dezember 2002 which resulted in a usable case number of 20235 households. Even though some of the questions asked were difficult to answer, this method was selected because of the much lower costs compared to face-to-face interviews. The fieldwork was done be GfK within the scope of multi-topic survey which was already being conducted in an existing household panel which further reduced the costs involved. Two pages of the questionnaire were dedicated for representative household structures.The energy consumption data determined in the survey were extrapolated specifically for each energy source to the total consumption of private households in Germany. This was based on an extrapolation approach which uses floorspace as the main reference variable plus additional stratification by regions (old and new federal states) and building or househould size.