Paper short abstract:

This article uses a conjoint analysis to probe the attitudes and preferences a group of low-income informal settlement dwellers in Cape Town and Lusaka towards non-contributory, publicly-financed grant for the unemployed

Paper long abstract:

Public preferences for welfare provision do more than just highlight the social legitimacy of programs. They also illuminate the beliefs ordinary citizens have about fairness and justice in society. Popular perceptions about the adequacy and potentially negative downstream effects of welfare policies affect articulation and agitation for pro-poor programs, especially among the poor themselves. Previous research has identified variation between societies over policy preferences –including the purposes and conditions attached to financial support – but there is no existing comparative research into variation across Africa, where debate is focused on whether financial support should be tied to some kind of work requirement or developmental project. This article analyzes the attitudes and preferences of low-income informal settlement dwellers in Cape Town and Lusaka and finds that respondents see unemployment as a failure of government policy, and, by extension, think it just that the poor and unemployed receive money from the government. Results from a conjoint experiment, however, reveal some striking differences in how respondents evaluate the deservingness of different categories of poor : Zambian respondents greatly penalize the poor who are not job seeking, while, in South Africa, this attribute does not matter. Furthermore, South African respondents overwhelmingly prefer a public works job opportunity while Zambians prefer a once-off empowerment grant. These preferences are largely a reflection of existing opportunity structures in the two countries, but also imply that what citizens deem emancipatory is highly context-specific and should inform the reconciling of different agendas for welfare expansion on the Continent.