Society: The Undeserving Unemployed?

[Who's fault is it that people are unemployed? ...] A more popular view (especially among Republican members of Congress and on the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal) lays the blame squarely on government itself. Extended unemployment benefits and other means-tested programs can undermine incentives to work.

Evidence suggests that individuals do prolong their job search when they receive unemployment benefits, partly because they are looking for the best possible job. But the magnitude of this effect is likely to be small.

A recent study by Rob Valletta and Katherine Kuang, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, compared lengths of unemployment among those eligible for unemployment insurance with those who were not eligible. Their statistical analysis suggests that extended benefits accounted for only four-tenths of 1 percentage point of the nearly 6 percentage point increase in the national unemployment rate over the last few years.

Some studies, such as those showing that long-term unemployment causes emotional anguish as well as economic stress, may elicit sympathy.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to find articles emphasizing that the long-term unemployed are lucky to have so much free time, or suggesting that they’re better off than they were in previous eras because they are more likely to have a working spouse.

In other words, maybe the unemployed and those who are most worried about them should just stop whining.

The moral and emotional tenor of the debate over extending unemployment benefits is consistent with psychological research showing that we all like to believe that people generally get what they deserve. We tend to have a high opinion of individuals who receive fortuitous rewards, and a low opinion of individuals who are victims of bad luck.

Melvin Lerner, the psychologist best known for his book, “The Belief in a Just World,” considered this belief a delusional means of avoiding moral discomfort.

From The Undeserving Unemployed by Nancy Folbre, June 21, 2010, at nytimes.com.