Universal verses Means-Tested Welfare
- Why welfare benefits need to be means tested:
- This approach is favoured by the New Right and promotes individual responsibility known as self-help
- as a concept self-help differentiates between the deserving and undeserving poor
- Such an method means peoples’ incomes and savings must be low enough to ‘deserve’ to qualify for welfare
- By examining individual incomes and savings money is saved from paying benefits to people who are too lazy to work
- This frees up tax-payers money for hospitals and schools and those people in genuine need
- It also stops the work-shy from seeing welfare as an occupation, eliminating the dependency culture
Why welfare benefits need to be universal:
- This approach is favoured by Social Democrats and promotes collective responsibility via the state taking care of people by redistributing taxation
- Universal benefits are there for everyone, like state pensions, healthcare and education
- Means-tested benefits for only the very poor, can lead to those in work being in poverty because they’re not earning enough
- the above is known as the poverty trap, something universal benefits will avoid
- poverty trap can lead to people avoiding work, creating a dependency culture so as to avoid becoming poor
- stigma of means-tested benefits can lead to people not claiming what they need
sociologytwynham.com 
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