Abstract
Conditioning welfare on behavior is now seen by most experts as a fair and efficient set of tools to tackle long-term poverty. Inspired from behavioral economics and social experiments, behavioral targeting has a solid scientific and moralistic background. How can this cognitive dimension impact efficiency? How do policymakers determine who qualifies as the deserving poor? How does eligibility evolve depending on popular conceptions of the “legitimate recipient” at a given time and place? What is the cost of (a) narrow targeting?
Based on field research and semi-structured interviews about two contemporary conditional cash transfers in the U.S. and in France, this chapter contributes to these debates by theorizing how a moral agenda is made. Picking the right incentives is thought by experts to be conducive to socially desirable outcomes. A more thorough analysis reveals that exposing behaviors of the poor to public scrutiny provides the grist for moral government.
The task of alleviating poverty thus appears less a matter of bettering living conditions than reassessing core social values that structure social stratification. By assigning economic value to moral worth, this kind of anti-poverty program primarily targets the middle class, broadly understood. This gap between policy targets and policy audience compels us to reconsider the notion of efficacy in social policy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I am indebted to Alix Meyer and Jean-Baptiste Velut for their valuable and helpful comments on the initial draft of this chapter.
- 2.
It relies on field research and results from a political science doctoral dissertation defended in 2011 at Sciences Po Grenoble, France. My dissertation looked at the circulation and translation of an experimental conditional cash transfer from the US (Opportunity NYC) to France (Revenu de Solidarité Active). It put forth the politics and networks at works in a social agenda-setting. 81 semi-structured interviews with elected officials and top managers were conducted in New York and Paris. The point was not to compare the French and US welfare states, à la Esping-Andersen, but to document the growing role of conditionality in social policy. The New York case offered a quite refined version of conditionality, in a context where welfare reform and economics are prominent. The French attempted to emulate the model, in an ambivalent setting of traditional resistance to individualization of social benefits and of promotion of incentives to cut welfare budgets. Despite being most different cases, behavioral conditionality happened to produce considerable administrative costs, thus switching the major costs of social programs from benefits to operating agencies. That appeared more acceptable to the public, yet not achieving the promise of a more efficient anti-poverty strategy.
- 3.
Formerly known by its full name, Manpower Development Research Corporation production of evidence has played a significant role in welfare reform, sustaining the idea that “the poor would be actually better off without welfare” (Somers and Block 2005: 280).
- 4.
“Grenelle” refers to rue de Grenelle, where government officials, trade unions, nonprofit and forprofit leaders met in May 1968 to come to an agreement to tackle social issues.
- 5.
“Experimentation and social welfare policymaking in the United States”, November 2007, MDRC. http://www.mdrc.org/publication/experimentation-and-social-welfare-policymaking-united-states. Last retrieved on Nov. 15, 2016.
- 6.
Mainly the Bloomberg Family Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, followed by AIG Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Broad Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, New York Community Trust, The Open Society Institute, The Robin Hood Foundation and the Starr Foundation.
- 7.
- 8.
Opportunity NYC supplemented the existing relief system.
- 9.
Speech: “Mayor Bloomberg Announces the Recommendations of the Mayor’s Commission for Economic Opportunity”, Sept. 18, 2006 [www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2006b/speech_091806.html]. Last retrieved on Nov. 15, 2016.
- 10.
Further information on Nicolas Sarkozy’s platform in Knapp 2013.
- 11.
“Strategic targeting is about the ideological and political question of who gets what and why.” (Van Oorschot 2001:241).
- 12.
“Social assistance provides us with a ‘litmus test’ regarding the moral foundations of the welfare state” (Sachweh et al. 2007:123).
- 13.
If work has became a religion in and of itself, this political rhetoric certainly pertains to the category of “secular prayers” (Burke 1945:393).
- 14.
This debate emerged with the industrial society. Thorstein Veblen (1898:190) mentions this conception of an “industrial” or “economic merit”, embedded in his dichotomy between “instinct of workmanship” and “irksomeness of labor”.
- 15.
The New York City Center for Economic Opportunity, Strategy and Implementation Report, Report to Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg, Dec. 2007, p. 1.
- 16.
One has to bear in mind that the official poverty measure, the Federal Poverty Level, has been long questioned by poverty experts throughout the country since the 1960s (Orshansky 1965).
- 17.
Opportunity NYC consists in three subprograms: Family Rewards (set of incentives in health, education and work), Work Rewards (work incentives only), and Spark (actually a pre-existing education incentives program run by the economist Roland Fryer, formally integrated with no significant follow-up).
- 18.
The frontiers traced to identify and qualify neighborhoods have been criticized for being somehow artificial. Gould-Ellen and Austin-Turner (2003)) argue that administrative maps hardly fit street-level reality.
- 19.
It can happen that a research institute also provides services, as it is the case for Community Service Society of New York. CSSNY does not participate to Opportunity NYC. Although, the Center for Economic Opportunity hired one of their senior staff.
- 20.
A weekly satirical newspaper, well-known in France for its investigative journalism. The interviewee is referring to the Jun. 10, 2009 issue.
- 21.
Even though it has been decided that a portion of the RSA recipients would not have a work requirement (“basic RSA”, as opposed to the “activity RSA”).
- 22.
Martin Hirsch declared before the National Assembly: “This bill ends the unbalance between rights and obligations. And when we speak of rights and obligations, that means rights and obligations for all: for recipients, of course, who will now have an individual, not household, contract to abide to, and that will have to be systematic; but also rights and obligations for public and private agencies managing all of the cases of people concerned by the RSA.” (Sept. 25, 2008, author’s translation from official transcript)
- 23.
In application of the “nudge” theory that was an important part of the cognitive background of Opportunity NYC. Likewise but without invoking “nudges”, the French official terminology would refer to “accompagnement” (support), not case work, when qualifying the relationship between the RSA recipients and the operating agencies.
- 24.
According to the data of the National Center for Children in Poverty and the official evaluation report of Opportunity NYC, the maximum annual TANF amount for a family of three was $6924 [http://www.nccp.org/profiles/NY_profile_36.html/], while the highest reward earned through Opportunity NYC was $13,235 (Riccio et al. 2010:98).
- 25.
With a threshold of $48,362 for a married couple with children [www.nyc.gov].
- 26.
Julie Bosman, “City Will Stop Paying the Poor for Good Behavior”, The New York Times, 30 March 2010.
- 27.
Conditional cash transfers do not fall under the neoclassical economics category, that ties benefits only on income level and family size, not individual characteristics (Moffitt 2015:746).
References
Alesina, A., & Glaeser, E. (2004). Fighting poverty in the US and Europe: A world of differences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Andries, M. (1996). The politics of targeting: The Belgian case. Journal of European Social Policy, 6(3), 209–223.
Anne, D., & L’Horty, Y. (2012). The RSA (Revenu de Solidarité Active) and back-to-work incentives in France. International Social Security Review, 65(3), 77–100.
Atkinson, A. B. (1995). On targeting social security: Theory and western experience with family benefits. In D. Van De Walle & K. Nead (Eds.), Public spending and the poor: Theory and evidence (pp. 25–68). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. S. (1970). Power and poverty: Theory and practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Barbehön, M., & Haus, M. (2015). Middle class and welfare state-discursive relations. Critical Policy Studies, 9(4), 473–484.
Barbier, J.-C. (2009). France. In P. De Beer & T. Schils (Eds.), The labour market triangle: Employment protection, unemployment compensation, and activation in Europe (pp. 174–197). Edward Elgar: Cheltenham.
Béland, D., & Hansen, R. (2000). Reforming the French welfare state: Solidarity, social exclusion and the three crisis of citizenship. West European Politics, 23(1), 47–64.
Bellah, R. N. (Ed.). (1991). The good society. New York: Knopf.
Bellah, R. N. (Ed.). (2008). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Berg, B. F. (2007). New York City politics: Governing Gotham. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Besley, T., & Coate, S. (1992). Workfare versus welfare: Incentive arguments for work requirements in poverty-alleviation programs. The American Economic Review, 82(1), 249–261.
Blank, R. M. (2010). The new American model of work-conditioned public support. In J. Alber & N. Gilbert (Eds.), United in diversity? Comparing social models in Europe and America (pp. 176–200). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burke, K. (1945). The grammar of motives. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Camou, M. (2005). Deservedness in poor neighborhoods: A morality struggle. In A. L. Schneider & H. M. Ingram (Eds.), Deserving and entitled: Social constructions and public policy (pp. 197–222). Albany: State University of New York.
Center for Economic Opportunity. (2007). Strategy and implementation report. Report to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. New York: Center for Economic Opportunity.
Chelle, E. (2013). An urban laboratory: New York on the policy market in the fight against poverty. English Edition of the Revue française de science politique, 63(5): 81–104.
Dagnaud, M. (2009). Martin Hirsch, le parti des pauvres. Histoire politique du RSA. Paris: Éditions de l’Aube.
De Donder, P., & Hindriks, J. (1998). The political economy of targeting. Public Choice, 95(1/2), 177–200.
Dubois, V. (2016). The bureaucrat and the poor: Encounters in French welfare offices. New York: Routledge.
Edelman, M. J. (1977). Political language: Words that succeed and policies that fail. New York: Academic Press.
Epstein, W. M. (2002). American policy making: Welfare as ritual. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Fellowes, M. C., & Rowe, G. (2004). Politics and the new American welfare states. American Journal of Political Science, 48(2), 362–373.
Forester, J., & Fischer, F. (1993). The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gans, H. J. (1994). Positive functions of the undeserving poor: Uses of the underclass in America. Politics & Society, 22(3), 269–293.
Gasper, D. (1996). Analysing policy arguments. European Journal of Development Research, 8(1), 36–62.
Gilbert, N. (2005). Protection to activation: The apotheosis of work. In P. Saunders (Ed.), Welfare to work in practice: Social security and participation in economic and social life (pp. 9–22). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Gilbert, N. (2013). Citizenship and the enabling state: The changing balance of rights and obligations. In A. Evers & A.-M. Guillemard (Eds.), Social policy and citizenship: The changing landscape (pp. 80–96). New York: Oxford University Press.
Goodin, R. E., & Le Grand, J. (1987). Not only the poor: The middle classes and the welfare state. London: Allen and Unwin.
Gould Ellen, I., & Austin Turner, M. (2003). Do neighborhoods matter and why. In J. Goering & J. D. Feins (Eds.), Choosing a better life? Evaluating the moving to opportunity social experiment (pp. 313–383). Washington, D.C: Urban Institute Press.
Hacker, J. S. (2002). The divided welfare state. The battle of public and private social benefits in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Handler, J. F., & Hasenfeld, Y. (1991). The moral construction of poverty: Welfare reform in America. Newbury Park: Sage.
Handler, J. F., & Hollingsworth, E. J. (1971). The “deserving poor:” a study of welfare administration. Chicago: Markham Pub..
Heckman, J. J., Smith, J., & Clements, N. (1997). Making the most out of Programme evaluations and social experiments: Accounting for heterogeneity in Programme impacts. The Review of Economic Studies, 64(4), 487–535.
Hirsch, M. (2010). Secrets de fabrication: Chroniques. Paris: Grasset.
Katz, M. B. (1989). The undeserving poor: From the war on poverty to the war on welfare. New York: Pantheon Books.
Kling, J. R., Liebman, J. B., & Katz, L. F. (2007). Experimental analysis of neighborhood effects. Econometrica, 75(1), 83–119.
Knapp, A. (2013). A paradoxical presidency: Nicolas Sarkozy, 2007–2012. Parliamentary Affairs, 66(1), 33–51.
König, P. D. (2015). Moral societal renewal or getting the country back to work: Welfare state culture as a resource and a constraint for policy discourse. Politics & Policy, 43(5), 647–678.
Lamont, M., & Duvoux, N. (2014). How neo-liberalism has transformed France’s symbolic boundaries? French Politics, Culture & Society, 32(2), 57–75.
Lipsky, M. (1984). Bureaucratic disentitlement in social welfare programs. Social Service Review, 58(1), 3–27.
Levine, D. P., & Turab Rizvi, A. (2005). Poverty, work and freedom: Political economy and the moral order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Majone, G. (1989). Evidence, argument and persuasion in the policy process. New Haven: Yale University Press.
MDRC & SEEDCO. (2008). Program design and evaluation strategy for Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards: A comprehensive conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot program for New York City.
Miller, H. T. (2012). Governing narratives: Symbolic politics and policy change. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Miller, C., Riccio, J. A., & Smith, J. (2009). A preliminary look at early educational results of the opportunity NYC-family rewards program: A research note for funders. MDRC.
Moffitt, R. A. (2015). The deserving poor, the family, and the US welfare system. Demography, 52(3), 729–749.
Mollenkopf, J. H., & Castells, M. (1992). Dual city: Restructuring New York. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
O’Connor, A. (1999). The Ford Foundation and philanthropic activism in the 1960s. In E. Condliffe Lagemann (Ed.), Philanthropic foundations: New scholarship, new possibilities (pp. 169–194). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Orshansky, M. (1965). Counting the poor: Another look at the poverty profile. Social Security Bulletin, 28(1), 3–29.
Osterman, P. (1991). Welfare participation in a full employment economy: The impact of neighborhood. Social Problems, 38(4), 475–491.
Parsons, D. O. (1991). Self-screening in targeted public transfer programs. The Journal of Political Economy, 99(4), 859–876.
Paz-Fuchs, A. (2008). Welfare to work: Conditional rights in social policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Piven, F., & Cloward, R. A. (1971). Regulating the poor: The functions of public welfare. New York: Pantheon Books.
Rein, M. (2001). Dominance, contest and reframing. In A. Ben-Arieh & J. Gal (Eds.), Into the promised land: Issues facing the welfare state (pp. 213–238). Westport: Praeger.
Riccio, J. A., & Miller, C. (2016). New York City’s first conditional cash transfer program: What worked, what didn’t. New York: MDRC.
Riccio, J. A., et al. (2010). Toward reduced poverty across generations: Early findings from new York City’s conditional cash transfer program. New York: MDRC.
Roe, E. (1994). Narrative policy analysis: Theory and practice. Durham: Duke University Press.
Roosma, F., Van Oorschot, W., & Gelissen, J. (2014). The weakest link in welfare state legitimacy: European perceptions of moral and administrative failure in the targeting of social benefits. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 55(6), 489–508.
Sachweh, P., Ullrich, C. G., & Christoph, B. (2007). The moral economy of poverty: On the conditionality of public support for social assistance schemes. In S. Mau & B. Veghte (Eds.), Social justice legitimacy and the welfare state (pp. 98–123). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Sanbonmatsu, L., Kling, J. R., Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2006). Neighborhoods and academic achievement: Results from the moving to opportunity experiment. The Journal of Human Resources, 41(4), 649–691.
Schneider, A. L., & Ingram, H. M. (1990). Behavioral assumptions of policy tools. Journal of Politics, 52(2), 510–522.
Schneider, A. L., & Ingram, H. M. (1993). Social construction of target populations: Implications for politics and policy. American Political Science Review, 87(2), 334–347.
Schram, S. (2012). The deep semiotic structure of deservingness: Discourse and identity in welfare policy. In F. Fischer & H. Gottweis (Eds.), The argumentative turn revisited: Public policy as communicative practice (pp. 236–269). Durham: Duke University Press.
Schwartz, J. (2000). Fighting poverty with virtue: Moral reform and America’s urban poor, 1825–2000. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Skocpol, T. (1991). Targeting within universalism: Politically viable policies to combat poverty in the United States. In C. Jencks & P. E. Peterson (Eds.), The urban underclass (pp. 411–436). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Smith, M. P., Koikkalainen, S., & Jáuregui Casanueva, L. (2014). The oligarchic diffusion of public policy: Deploying the Mexican ‘magic bullet’ to combat poverty in new York City. Urban Affairs Review, 50(1), 3–33.
Somers, M. R., & Block, F. (2005). From poverty to perversity: Ideas, markets, and institutions over 200 years of welfare debate. American Sociological Review, 70(2), 260–287.
Soss, J., Fording, R. C., & Schram, S. (2011). Disciplining the poor: Neoliberal paternalism and the persistent power of race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Spicker, P., Álvarez Leguizamón, S., & Gordon, D. (2007). Poverty: An international glossary. New York: Zed Books.
Standing, G. (2011). Behavioural conditionality: Why the nudges must be stopped. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 19(1), 27–38.
Stoesz, D. (1997). Welfare behaviorism. Society, 34(3), 68–77.
Stone, D. (2012). Policy paradox: The art of political decision making. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Teles, M. S. (1996). Whose welfare? AFDC and elite politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Van Oorschot, W. (2001). Troublesome targeting: On the multilevel causes of non-take-up. In A. Ben-Arieh & J. Gal (Eds.), Into the promised land: Issues facing the welfare state (pp. 239–258). Westport: Praeger.
Van Oorschot, W. (2008). Popular deservingness perceptions and conditionality of solidarity in Europe. In W. Van Oorschot, M. Opielka, & B. Pfau-Effinger (Eds.), Culture and welfare state: Values and social policy in comparative perspective (pp. 268–288). Edward Elgar: Northampton.
Veblen, T. (1898). The instinct of workmanship and the irksomeness of labor. American Journal of Sociology, 4(2), 187–201.
Vlandas, T. (2013). The politics of in-work benefits: The case of the “active income of solidarity” in France. French Politics, 11, 117–142.
Walker, J. L. (1969). The diffusion of innovations among the American states. The American Political Science Review, 63(3), 880–899.
Williamson, J. B. (1974). Beliefs about the motivation of the poor and attitudes toward poverty policy. Social Problems, 21(5), 634–648.
Wilson, W. J. (1997). When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Knopf.
Wolff, J., & Haubrich, D. (2009). Economism and its limits. In M. Moran, M. Rein, & R. E. Goodin (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public policy (pp. 746–770). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zatz, N. (2012). Poverty unmodified? Critical reflections on the deserving/undeserving distinction. UCLA Law Review, 50, 550–597.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chelle, E. (2018). Frame, Funnel, Deter: The Mechanisms of Behavioral Targeting. In: Barrault-Stella, L., Weill, PE. (eds) Creating Target Publics for Welfare Policies. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89596-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89596-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89595-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89596-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)