By Michael A. Lewis, Associate Professor
The Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
After spending 15 years teaching about, writing about, and observing the U.S. welfare state, I believe that the policies that make it up are based on a questionable assumption. In general, U.S. residents think that there are two kinds of people who receive social welfare benefits—those who deserve them and those who don’t. This is sometimes stated as a difference between the deserving and undeserving poor but it goes beyond poverty. The deserving are those who are in need through no fault of their own, while the undeserving are those who are in need because of “bad” decisions they have made. Perhaps they chose not to work enough, to have a child too early and/or outside of marriage, not to finish school, etc. The key to becoming a member of the deserving group is to be a working person, someone who has worked, or someone who is thought unable to work. Here “work” is used to mean someone working for a wage in the “above ground” economy. For those who distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving this is the only kind of work that counts. Taking care of one’s kids or other worthwhile things people can be doing instead of working for a wage simply don’t “cut it.”
Those who are working, have worked, or are unable to work, have the earned income tax credit, social security, and unemployment insurance. The most infamous program for the undeserving is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF but more commonly called “welfare”). TANF recipients are usually single non-working mothers and typically receive less than recipients of unemployment and social security. TANF recipients are also subjected to a work requirement in order to continue receiving benefits. This requirement means that they have to do some type of work in order to receive benefits. Those who don’t may have their benefits reduced or eliminated. It would be laughable for someone to propose that recipients of social security be required to work in return for their benefits. This is because, so the reasoning would go, they already worked for them back when they were “going to work every day” and “paying into the system.” Even though many in the U.S. seem wedded to the idea that there are deserving and undeserving recipients of social welfare benefits, I think this idea may be way too simplistic.
To see what I mean, consider the stereotypical “lazy” welfare mother. She is poor and needs “welfare” because she has chosen not to work and, because of this choice, doesn’t really deserve assistance. Perhaps we should support her for the sake of her children or simply to be “charitable” but, morally, she has no right to help. I think this view may be wrongheaded for reasons that will soon become clear.
As I understand it, geneticists believe that any observable trait that differs among people can be valid to study genetically, including behavioral traits. They also believe that complex observable traits result from a complicated interaction of genes with other genes and with the environment. They don’t claim to understand these interactions completely but think that what’s going on is that the effects of some genes depend on other genes as well as the environment and that the effect of the environment depends on genes.
As some readers may be aware, there is currently a controversial area of genetics called, behavioral genetics, that focuses on how genes and environment interact to affect behavior, including human behavior. Based on having read some of this work, I think that those working in this field regard human behaviors, such as the choices we make, as complex traits. If choices make up a pattern that some would call laziness, I think this laziness would be regarded as a complex trait too. The problem for the deserving/undeserving distinction is that people don’t choose their genes nor do they choose their environments, at least not completely. This is why it is such a complex process in learning how to analyze social behavior when you have to consider all of these different factors.
I’m the father of a young daughter, half of whose genes came from her mother and half from me, but this is not something she chose. All of her life we’ve chosen the environments she’s spent time in. Since she is still pretty young, this will still be the case for a few years to come. Even as she starts playing more of a role in deciding where she’ll spend her time, the interaction among her genes and between her genes and our earlier environmental choices for her may affect these “choices” too. What I’ve said about my daughter, of course, applies to all of us, whether we are “hard working” or “lazy”.
If genes and environment interact to affect human behaviors, including “laziness,” then the problem it raises for the deserving/undeserving distinction should be clear. In a sense the mother on welfare who has chosen not to work hasn’t really chosen not to work at all. She hasn’t chosen her genes, she hasn’t chosen much of her environment, and she hasn’t chosen how these interact to help create her “laziness.” So is it really fair to deny her the help she needs, on moral grounds, because she has “chosen” not work?
What I’m saying here might be troubling for several reasons. Some might think my argument is similar to the long held view that the average black is not as smart as the average white and that this difference is due, in part, to genetic differences between these two “races.” This is not the case at all. The racial difference in smartness argument is an argument about genes helping to explain differences between groups. What I’m saying is that interactions among genes and between genes and environment may explain differences within a group, where that group is the entire human race. To say that genes and environment interact to affect human behavior doesn’t mean that supposed differences between blacks and whites are partly due to racial differences in genes. An example should help make this clear.
Suppose that blacks and whites differ, on average, for a trait and that genes and environment interact to affect this trait. It’s logically possible for this to be true and for blacks and whites to have identical genes. This is because even though they have identical genes blacks and whites may, on average, have grown up in very different environments. The interaction of identical genes with different environments may be what explains the racial difference in the trait.
Others might be bothered by what I’m saying because they view the idea that human behavior may be influenced by genes as very suspicious. They might say that human behavior is caused mainly by social factors, especially oppressive ones. To this I would say that it is hard to read the work of geneticists and come away believing that genes play almost no role in influencing human behavior—there just seems to be too much evidence that suggests the possibility of such influence. Also, to say that genes may influence behavior is not to say that the environment, even an oppressive one, doesn’t. Remember that what I’m saying is that genes interact with the environment to influence our behaviors. Part of that environment may be racist, sexist, homophobic, neighborhoods ignored by investors and other powers that be, “crappy” schools, lacking in employment opportunities, etc. All I’m saying is that these kinds of environmental factors may interact with our genes to result in certain behaviors being more likely than others.
Still others might have problems with what I’m saying because they believe it means that people cannot be held accountable for their bad decisions. If people make such decisions because of their genes and environments and they have no control over these, how can we hold them responsible for their choices? I have to admit that this even troubles me, especially when one leaves social welfare policy and considers criminal justice. But if behaviors differ among human beings, if behaviors are examples of complex traits, if all such traits are influenced by genes and environment, and if we don’t completely choose our genes or environments then it’s very hard to see how we can fairly be held completely responsible for our “choices,” good or bad.
What does all this mean for social welfare policy? The main thing we should do is stop trying to make policy decisions based on who is deserving of help. Instead of trying to figure out if people are deserving of help we should simply try to figure what they need and how to provide it. If people need housing, how do we get them that? If they need food, how do we get them that? The question “do they need food or housing because they’ve made bad choices and don’t deserve help?” should be seen as irrelevant, since it is so hard to separate the choices they’ve made from the ones that were made for them. Yet we should be careful. Even as we focus less on whether people deserve help, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still care about incentives.
Incentives may be very important parts of our environments that interact with our genes and other parts of the environment to influence our behavior. Thus, whether a policy might result in people working less, spending a longer time looking for a job, family “break-up”, etc. could still be relevant questions to ask. The point is that these questions can be asked and policies based on our best guess answers to them can be proposed without blaming people for their bad choices. A policy that is “in the spirit” of what I have in mind is the basic income (BI).
BI is a proposal that for many would be a better way to deal with poverty than we do now, at least in the U.S. It would set a minimum income in the sense that no one’s income would be allowed to fall below that minimum, whether or not they worked. Those who did work would pay a tax on their earnings but the tax would be set so that those working would always have a net income higher than those who stayed home and lived only on the BI. If it were possible to get this minimum income high enough, poverty could be better dealt with and people would still have a clear incentive to work. Doing both of these things together is how BI considers the incentive to work without also withholding help from people in need because of their “bad” choices. I think that the more we can move toward policies like BI, the better off we’ll be. Such policies would allow us to go beyond the terribly outdated practice of trying to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Carole Schiffman, Steven Strogatz, Eri Noguchi, Jennifer Waldman-Green, Joel Blau, Mimi Abramovitz, and Yuko Kawanishi for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Credit picture: CC Gino Zahnd
A wonderful text, but I have to ask: Is there also something inside the genes, to justify the right to judge? Or are genes abused to warrant the judgement, who deserves social benefits and who doesn’t? Accordingly there must be a kind of gene for being on the Bench. But if we underlying democracy, then a majority chooses the genes, who are allowed to judge: A kind of gene-pool selects its “master-genes” to represent the genes within the pool. The question is: Do the “master-genes” feel responsible for the whole gene-pool (all living beings) or only for the majority (part of the humanity), who voted for them? And as the text here sais: decisions are not only based on genes…
Christoph,
Thanks for the comment. I’m not sure I understood your questions so I’ll answer what I think you were asking. You can correct me if you feel I’ve misunderstood you. First you asked is there, “something inside genes to justify the right to judge?” I think you were asking might there be a genetic predisposition in all (or some) of us to judge people as deserving or not. I suspect there might be but if there is, it wouldn’t follow that we are justified in making such judgements. There might be a genetic predisposition in all (or some) of us to want to kill people who have done us or those we love harm but if we act on that desire, there is a good chance we’ll end up in prison. That’s because many of us in many different societies seem to have decided that acting on such a desire is wrong and we may be correct about that. But whether we are correct wouldn’t be a consequence of a genetic predisposition for vengeance, unless one believes in the questionable principle that whatever we’re genetically predisposed to do we should do. You also asked a question having to do with democracy and “majority genes” voting in “master-genes.” I think what you were asking here is whether the deserving/undeserving distinction is based on some kind of majority rule. That is, a majority of the electorate chooses people who will represent their point of view that judging recipients of social benefits as deserving or not is something that should be done even if this is at the expense of those deemed undeserving. This may be going on but, again, it wouldn’t follow that it should be, unless one believes in the principle that whatever a majority or its representatives decide in a democracy is morally legitimate. But this sounds like a very troubling principle. Suppose a majority of the electorate in a democracy wanted to kill all people with red hair and managed to elect representatives who were willing to implement this policy. The idea that, therefore, the policy should be implemented seems deeply disturbing.
Thanks, Michael, for your answer! Yes, I ment with “inside the genes” genetic predisposition.
As you may guess, I am not a native English speaker, but from Germany. In our history we have an experiance with killing millions of Jews – “legal” by the former law. And you won’t believe, but there are people today, talking about a “Jew-Gene”…
If you write, that there are people justifying to deny social benefits by argumenting with genes, it seems to me the same like the “Jew-Gene” – this could be supposed to be legal, but at least in my opinion it is not moral (I don’t believe in “genetic predisposition” for behaviour, because it’s a kind of determinism and excuse for any misbehaviour).
That’s why I support the proposal of a Basic Income for all, because it doesn’t care about genetic predisposition (as you wrote). But I am deeply afraid, that it fails because of democratic principles, because, as the German experiance shows, the opinion of a majority can be stronger than morality, but legal.
Christoph,
The history of Germany’s treatment of Jews is what I had in mind when I gave my “red hair” example. I thought that discussing a hypothetical example about people with “red hair” might be a way of making my point without raising the “heated” feelings that discussing the holocaust might raise. The U.S. has its own history of a “tyranny of the majority” where blacks were legally oppressed for years after the official end of slavery. So I get your points. But, based on the science I’ve read, I do think that genes may play a role in influencing behavior and I don’t think that this alone is determinism. This is because when it comes to behavior all genes do, or so we think, is make some behaviors more or less likely—they don’t determine them. I think, arguably, what does amount to determinism is to say that genes interact with other genes and with the environment to affect behavior, which is what I’m suggesting in the opinion piece. I’ve read enough philosophy to know that this does raise the free-will/determinism debate but not enough to know all of the arguments that philosophers would raise against what I’m saying. This is something I intend to read more about. At this point, I’ve come to my position more from reading science than philosophy. The reason I think it may be important to make the points I’m making is because I think that in the U.S. at least we may overestimate how much free will people have when it comes to the circumstances they find themselves in. I think this drives the distinction made between those who are considered deserving poor and those considered undeserving. If people thought more about how much of where we end up in life might really be due to circumstances beyond our control, like the genes we inherited and the environments that were largely chosen for us, perhaps they’d be less inclined to judge and more inclined to support policies like a basic income. Now I’m not naive—I know there will still be racists and politics will still be the nasty business that it is, at least in the U.S. But perhaps, just perhaps, having more people consider how much luck in the genetic and environmental “lotteries” affect where we all end up in life might make things a bit better.
I think, there are enough examples around the world, which could prove, that there were (and still are) justifications of crimes based on the difference of humans. Thereby the “equality” and membership of the “better group” is often thought by specific characteristics (I mean: ideology, religion or visual: skin colour, body forms). But these members are individuals, too, and differ from each other in many aspects – the common is the mentioned characteristic, which gives them a sense of community, which they need, not to feel being alown.
The question of an influence of genes on behaviour is in my opinion absurd. Genes don’t determine the behaviour, but maybe the potential, how to behave. That’s expressed by the word “predisposition”. But I can’t believe, that there is something like a “murderer-gene”. Behaviour is a complex topic, influenced by many factors, including potentials given by genes. The reasoning to behave in a specific way because of gene predisposition would lead to the excuse: I can’t behave in another way, because it’s my nature (genetical background).
Aren’t we humans exactly because we are able to act independent of such genetical (and other influencing) backgrounds? Don’t we just use the given gene predisposition within the environment we live in, because we (or the genes?) want to survive?
We learnd the habituation to deserve money only in specific cases. I think, that’s why people have problems to accept the idea of Basic Income – even if they have the gene predisposition to change their mind. But still they have the majority and won’t hardly likely vote for people, who want to change the system, even if they feel the necessity.
Is the free will/determinism controversy relevant to your thesis? You were careful to say that the combination of genes and environment “affect” one’s behavior, without saying that the behavior was totally determined by these conditions. And you expressed some worry about abandoning the language of responsibility and choice, particularly with respect to criminal cases, which leads me to think that you still want to leave open the possibility that some choices are not entirely determined by genes and environment. Is such a hedge for free will a slippery slope back to blaming the poor for their poverty? Or is a nuanced positing of responsibility compatible with the recognition that everyone’s behavior is “affected”, predisposed, and so on by genes and environment, with the consequence that we should set aside the deserving/undeserving distinction?
Mike H.,
I am hedging by using words like “affect” and “influence” but this is not because I don’t want to “take a stand.” The problem is that I don’t know what stand to take. I think that genes may interact among themselves and with the environment, in some way, to affect human behavior. It seems clear that we don’t choose our genes and we don’t choose much of our environment. To the extent that these affect our behavior, it would seem then that ultimately we don’t choose to do a good deal of what we do. Does this mean there is no free will? I just don’t think I’m enough of a philosopher or geneticist to decide. I suspect that geneticists and philosophers may not even know enough to decide this for sure (although neuroscientist Sam Harris here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/morality-without-free-wil_b_868804.html argues that scientifically and philosophically free will is a “non-starter”). What I’m really getting at in the piece is the idea that the deserving/undeserving distinction (relative to the “able-bodied”) seems to rely on there being an easy way to determine who is deserving and who is not by looking at the choices people have made. If genes and environment completely determine our behavior, then it would seem that what we do is caused but not chosen. If genes and environment largely affect but don’t completely determine our behavior, then there is room for free will. But I would still ask, from a practical point of view, how do we determine what proportion of what we do is a result of free will and what proportion is a result of our genes and environments that we didn’t choose? It seems to me that we just don’t know how to answer this question. Now I wouldn’t say that whenever people face a hard question we should give up. But with people’s livelihoods at stake, in this case, I think we should “give up” meaning that we should stop trying to figure out whether people are in need because they chose to make bad decisions and simply move beyond the deserving/undeserving distinction.
Christoph,
We agree that genes don’t determine behavior but maybe the “potential how to behave.” We also agree that “behavior is a complex topic influenced by many factors, including potentials given by genes.” This is precisely why I keep saying that genes interact with the environment. I suspect that what I mean by “environment” includes the “many factors” you have in mind. I think that talk like a “murderer-gene” is mainly something reporters do to sell newspapers, is, at best, misleading when it comes to trying to communicate what science says about the possible role of genes in something as complex as human behavior, and is best avoided. I think you might be right that openly considering how genes may predispose people to behaving in certain ways may lead to people making excuses for “bad” behaviors and saying “my genes made me do it.” But I don’t think this possibility means that, as a matter of science, we shouldn’t explore the question of whether genes may result in the potential to behave in certain ways. This may be one place where you and I disagree. I guess it also raises philosophical questions about the moral responsibilities of scientists. You also asked the question, “Aren’t we humans exactly because we are able to act independent of such genetical (and other influencing) backgrounds?” I think here, unless I’ve misunderstood you, you’re raising the free will question. I’ve already said what I think about that in my response to Michael Howard.
I would like to give also my statement about “deserving” and “undeserving”:
The German translation has some meanings: “deserving” can be translated as “würdig sein” (to be dignified) or as “verdienen” (to earn). Because we talk about a “Basic Income”, it seems, that (at least in German) we talk about “earning” instead of asking for “being dignified”. Undeserving is in my opinion related with “grudge” or “enviousness” (the opposit of “to deign”, “to grant”) – as it seems, a receiver of social benefits has to “earn” (“deserve”) the help in the eyes of the help-provider.
But because the talk is about genes and genetic predisposition, I want to quote Charles Darvin from his book “The Descent of Man”:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. (Darwin, Charles: “The Decent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”, Chapter 5, 1871)
Are we still not civilised, that we must eliminate those, who we declare to be undignified? Thus, because they don’t (or can’t) contribute to the survival of the community they live in? And are we “better” civilised, because we use money instead of weapons for eliminating those, who we declare as “undeserving”? Why do imbecile or maimed with rich parents “deserve” it more to live than such ones with nobody, who can care about them? What about the human rights: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Can genes, genetic predispositions or any behaviour really answer these questions? Have people fundamentally changed (from a genetic point of view) since Darvin’s observation?
It seems to me to grant social benefits is more a question about being dignified, than “earning” the help. And a Basic Income makes it redundant to ask, if somebody “deserves” social benefits. It’s in my opinion a participation at the wealth of the civilisation the recipients live in without demanding from them to contribute something – their being is “enough” contribution.
Joerg,
I agree—regardless of how genes, environment, or free will affect people’s behavior I think we all have a human right to (at least) subsistence. But, judging by the current form our welfare state takes, it doesn’t appear that all of my fellow citizens in the U.S. agree with me. Hopefully, that will change someday.
I also agree that one of the advantages of Basic Income is that it shifts the argument away from relevance of deserving and undeserving. I’m writing from the UK, where current policies are heavily towards that deserving/undeserving division, in a way that takes no account of the circumstances – genetic and/or environmental – which push people into poverty. Increasing means-testing and conditionality for benefits is the name of the game in Britain. Few of the people I work with (as a welfare benefits adviser) would choose to live with the poverty, insecurity and stigma of benefit-dependence, though many may for various reasons have made ‘choices’ rendering that dependency inevitable: drug dependency, criminality, entering abusive relationships, not holding down jobs. The web of reasons for such ‘choices’ is so complex that it’s meaningless to try to distinguish deserving and undeserving, even if a society whose wealthy are similarly morally complex and in many ways parasitic upon the tax payer had the right to make such judgments.
Nor is it relevant to make the distinction. The right to life (and to private and family life – Articles 2 and 8 ECHR) is (widely if not universally) accepted as existing independent of desert. Of course I’m writing from a wealthy economy, and I can’t pontificate about the realities in developing nations. But I’d say that human rights look forwards, not backwards, and that any individual in this society has a right to an income sufficient for dignity and for hope of building a better future. That’s a moral issue; but it also makes social & economic sense. By recognising the dignity of the person, a basic income helps reintegrate those on or below the fringe back into society. And by reducing the fearsome insecurity of the shift from benefits to work, people are more likely to take the risk. Incentives matter, hence the need of a tax system which rewards work. (The proviso being that ‘work’ needs a much broader definition than it currently has, to recognise the social & economic value of eg much caring work.) But rewarding workis very different from punishing lack of it, as is our current direction.
Deborah,
I like the phrase “rewarding work is very different from punishing lack of it.” It sounds like the UK and the U.S. are “kindred spirits” when it comes to focusing on the latter.