The five CARIN criteria
Van Oorschot (2000) named five criteria people use to judge deservingness, abbreviated CARIN: Control, whether people are responsible for their plight; Attitude, whether recipients are grateful and compliant; Reciprocity, whether they have contributed or will contribute; Identity, whether they belong to 'us'; and Need, how great their need is. The control criterion links to attribution theory, which concerns how people assign causes. Van Oorschot (2006) found that citizens across European welfare states share a common ranking, placing the elderly highest and immigrants lowest.
Psychological origins
Petersen (2012) argued that deservingness judgments reflect an evolved 'deservingness heuristic' adapted to exchanging help in small groups: people quickly judge whether others are 'unlucky' or 'lazy' and decide whether to help. In experiments, Petersen and colleagues (2011) showed that a single cue that a recipient was actively seeking work changed judgments so much that left–right differences nearly disappeared. Gilens (1999) found that US media overrepresented Black people among the poor, fueling 'lazy recipient' stereotypes and opposition to welfare.
Political implications
The theory explains why targeted welfare is politically more vulnerable than universal welfare: support weakens when recipients are portrayed as 'undeserving'. Welfare chauvinism, which seeks to restrict immigrants' benefits, is a case of the identity criterion becoming politicized, and the theory overlaps with the social construction of target populations, in which policies are designed according to target group images. It also connects to strategies that avoid blame for welfare retrenchment by casting recipients negatively.
FAQ
- What is welfare deservingness in simple terms?
- People judge who deserves help by asking whether they are responsible for their situation, how they behave, whether they contribute, whether they belong and how needy they are.
- Why does it matter politically?
- Public support for welfare policies varies greatly depending on whether recipients are seen as deserving.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- van Oorschot, W. (2000). Who should get what, and why? On deservingness criteria and the conditionality of solidarity among the public. Policy & Politics, 28(1), 33–48. The CARIN criteria.
- van Oorschot, W. (2006). Making the difference in social Europe: Deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states. Journal of European Social Policy, 16(1), 23–42. Cross-European ranking.
- Petersen, M. B. (2012). Social welfare as small-scale help: Evolutionary psychology and the deservingness heuristic. American Journal of Political Science, 56(1), 1–16. Evolutionary heuristic.
- Petersen, M. B., Slothuus, R., Stubager, R., & Togeby, L. (2011). Deservingness versus values in public opinion on welfare: The automaticity of the deservingness heuristic. European Journal of Political Research, 50(1), 24–52. Automatic heuristic.
- Gilens, M. (1999). Why Americans hate welfare: Race, media, and the politics of antipoverty policy. University of Chicago Press. Race and welfare.
- Cook, F. L. (1979). Who should be helped? Public support for social services. Sage. Early study.
- van Oorschot, W., Roosma, F., Meuleman, B., & Reeskens, T. (Eds.). (2017). The social legitimacy of targeted welfare: Attitudes to welfare deservingness. Edward Elgar. Recent research.