Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In countries with residual welfare provision, individuals or families in need of support must rely on means-tested financial assistance to make ends meet. As enrollment into financial assistance schemes is usually based on the recommendation of social service professionals (SSPs), it is important to understand how SSPs’ beliefs about poverty shape their choice of financial assistance schemes and the recommended assistance quantum. We study two types of financial assistance schemes here: a one-time cash assistance and a short-term monthly cash assistance. Our evidence comes from a mixed-method research design. We used the factorial survey method to elicit financial assistance decisions from 282 SSPs in Singapore. SSPs were asked to make assistance recommendations on fictitious vignettes, which were used to correlate with their perceptions of poverty. We also followed up with a subset of SSPs through semi-structured interviews to probe deeper at their reasoning behind their decisions. Our findings show that SSPs who endorse structural reasons of poverty rather than individualistic explanations for poverty are more willing to recommend financial assistance, especially one-time assistance instead of monthly payouts. The findings imply that discretionary financial assistance schemes have to account for the beliefs of the implementers to ensure equitable distribution.