Abstract
Politicians engage in, and the media amplifies, social constructions of welfare recipients as undeserving. Such messaging seeks to influence mass public opinion, but what are the effects on the target population receiving welfare benefits? We test if deservingness messaging affects welfare recipients' mental health. To do so, we exploit a quasi-experiment entailing a dramatic shift in deservingness messaging after a welfare recipient in Denmark became the subject of a national debate, utilizing detailed administrative data on the ensuing consumption of antidepressants by other welfare recipients. We find evidence that welfare recipients experienced worse mental health outcomes after being exposed to deservingness messaging, reflected in a 1.2-percentage-point increase in the use of antidepressants in the weeks following the airing of a critical interview. Deservingness messaging particularly affected more vulnerable groups who had a history of mental health problems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | British Journal of Political Science |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 594 - 612 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| ISSN | 0007-1234 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Apr 2023 |
Keywords
- deservingness messaging
- media exemplars
- mental health
- social constructions
- social welfare
- target groups
- welfare stigma