Regular Ph.D. Fellow, Cohort 2023

Research Interests

• Welfare states and social policy
• Redistributive preferences
• Deservingness opinion
• Family policies
• Gender inequalities

Dissertation topic
The deservingness of families: What is the perception of the deservingness of families to receive social support in modern welfare states?

Dissertation abstract
Studies on public opinion indicate that individuals generally support the welfare state and its function, but they do not necessarily support all beneficiaries of social spending equally. The question 'Who should get what and why?' is addressed in the context of research on deservingness opinion, an approach to understanding redistributive preferences and public support for social policies with regard to different target groups. The proposed PhD project examines families as a specific target group of social spending, as they are rarely explicitly considered in the literature on deservingness opinion. More precisely, this project aims to investigate the perceived deservingness of different family models or constellations, as well as the effect of deservingness opinion on redistributive preferences with regard to families. To do so, I combine a systematic literature review for a comprehensive overview of previous research on the deservingness of families with a factorial survey experiment comparing the perceived deservingness of different family models and constellations. Finally, I will compare the effect of deservingness opinion on redistributive preferences with other explanatory concepts such as self-interest or ideologies.

Academic Supervisors
Simone Scherger
Franziska Deutsch