Deservingness Heuristics and Policy Attitudes toward the Elderly in an Aging Society: Evidence from Japan

• Author: Yesola Kweon,ByeongHwa Choi
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211016061
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211016061

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211016061

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How does population aging affect public support for gov-

ernment expenditure on the elderly? Rapid demographic

changes that many countries have faced in recent decades

have highlighted concerns about the sustainability of the

welfare state. While a growing number of senior citizens

have increased this group’s need for government support,

a sustainable welfare state requires an adequate depen-

dency ratio. This is because social expenditures for the

non-working population should be covered by the taxes

levied on wage earners. However, in many advanced

industrial countries, population aging and low birth rates

have upset this equilibrium and have posed fundamental

public policy challenges.

Understanding policy attitudes toward programs for

the elderly is important because public support in democ-

racies is essential for successful policy reforms, which

are necessary for addressing a demographic slowdown.

Previous studies have shown that programs related to old

age are more popular than welfare programs for other

marginalized groups, such as the unemployed, or the

working-age poor (Gilens 1995; Huddy, Jones, and Chard

2001; Larsen 2008; van Oorschot 2000, 2006). This is

because, unlike the latter groups, which are perceived to

be able-bodied and shirking their responsibility, aging is

considered a universal, unavoidable risk that everyone

faces in their lifetime. The universality of aging automati-

cally justifies social welfare directed at the elderly with-

out any need to prove the worthiness of welfare recipients.

As a result, recent studies argue that deservingness heu-

ristics are less useful in mobilizing people’s support for

the elderly (Goerres, Karlsen, and Kumlin 2020).

As the policy needs of elderly people have increased

with the demographic shift in many advanced industrial

economies, however, the burden on the working popula-

tion has grown ever larger. Against this backdrop, others

posit that as a high old-age dependency ratio makes state

resources scarce, age becomes an important source of

social division that reshapes welfare politics. The elderly

are inclined to support expanding pensions and health

care spending over expenditure on work-related pro-

grams, while younger people prefer the latter programs

1016061PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211016061Political Research QuarterlyKweon and Choi

research-article2021

1 University,

2Dongguk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Corresponding Author:

ByeongHwa Choi, Department of International Trade, Dongguk

University, 30, Pildong-ro 1-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul 04620, Republic of Korea.

Email: bh.choi@dongguk.edu

Deservingness Heuristics and Policy

Attitudes toward the Elderly in an Aging

Society: Evidence from Japan

Yesola Kweon1 and ByeongHwa Choi2

Abstract

Deservingness theory contends that spending on the elderly is widely supported across age groups because, unlike

other groups such as immigrants or the unemployed, senior citizens are perceived as morally worthy of social aid.

However, through a survey experiment in Japan, a prototypical aging society, this study shows that in a state with a

large population of senior citizens, there is a significant age gap in policy preferences with the working-age population

demonstrating stronger opposition to government support for the elderly. To induce empathetic policy attitudes

toward the elderly, therefore, effective issue framing is necessary. However, emphasizing economic need is not

enough; it is only when both the elderly’s economic need and effort to work are emphasized that we see a positive

attitudinal change among the working-age population. In addition, we find that the economically secure are more

sensitive to senior citizens’ economic need and effort to work in determining their policy support. By contrast, the

economically insecure exhibit unqualified support for the elderly. These findings demonstrate that deservingness for

the elderly is not innate, but is driven by conditional altruism. Furthermore, our work emphasizes the importance of

issue framing in generating intergenerational solidarity in a rapidly aging society.

Keywords

population aging, welfare deservingness, redistributive support, survey experiment, Japan

Sungkyunkwan Seoul, South Korea

2022, Vol. 75(3) 591–606

Article

592 Political Research Quarterly 75(3)

(Ansell and Gingrich 2018; Browning 1975; Sinn and

Uebelmesser 2003; Sørensen 2013). This similar pattern

is also found in younger and older political elites’ policy

behavior (McClean 2019). While some are of the view

that younger people would still have an incentive to sup-

port government spending on the elderly in anticipation

of their future benefits (Svallfors 2008), in a rapidly aging

society like Japan where the country faces substantial fis-

cal constraints, the increasing number of younger popula-

tions feel significantly less confident than the older

generation about their standard of living in old age (Pew

Research Center 2014). Rather, as population aging

intensifies, the young and the old are likely to become

competing groups with incompatible policy interests.

Given rapid population aging and limited fiscal

resources, which can potentially cause intergenerational

conflicts, in what conditions do working-age people posit

more empathetic attitudes toward the elderly? This paper

seeks to answer this question through a survey experi-

ment in Japan, a prototypical graying society. Our study

finds that a large age-based divide exists in Japan.

Younger people, in general, show significantly lower sup-

port for government assistance to the elderly than older

citizens. Opposition to state support for the elderly is par-

ticularly strong among younger people with secure

employment and advanced labor skills. This is the group

of people who are most likely to contribute to the welfare

state with relatively little personal gain. Yet, a heuristic

that emphasizes the economic need and effort of senior

citizens reduces the age gap in popular support for gov-

ernment aid to the aged. Especially for economically

secure youth, in addition to emphasizing economic need,

when the elderly poor are presented as “workers” taking

responsibility for their own economic situation by partici-

pating in the labor market, we observe a positive attitudi-

nal change, indicating the operation of conditional

altruism (Fong 2007).

The findings of this research have important implica-

tions not only for the study of age-based social cleavages

but also for research on policy attitudes. First, earlier

studies emphasize the high perceived deservingness of

the elderly (Gilens 2009; Goerres, Karlsen, and Kumlin

2020; Huddy, Jones, and Chard 2001; Laenen 2020). As a

result, although many have examined the effects of

deservingness heuristics, the focus has mainly been

placed on support for the working-age poor or immi-

grants (Aarøe and Petersen 2014; Alesina, Miano, and

Stantcheva 2018; Fong 2007; Jensen and Petersen 2017;

Slothuus 2007, among many). Few have studied their

effects on support for the elderly, or even when they do,

they have found the ineffectiveness of deservingness heu-

ristics (Goerres, Karlsen, and Kumlin 2020). By contrast,

our research demonstrates that in aging societies, where

resources have been increasingly scarce, the elderly do

not automatically trigger empathetic public attitudes, and

individuals are driven by age-based self-interest. More

importantly, we show that as with other marginalized

groups, heuristics that emphasize the economic need and

effort to work are necessary to garner intergenerational

support for government assistance to the elderly, espe-

cially from welfare contributors.

In addition, previous studies point out multiple fac-

tors—self-interest, prospective self-interest, and empa-

thy—that influence the formation of other policy

preferences. Nevertheless, we know little about in what

condition each motive activates and who is more respon-

sive to altruism as opposed to self-interest. In this regard,

through a sensitive analysis, we demonstrate that eco-

nomically insecure young people are more driven by pro-

spective interest, yielding a high level of support for

elderly-related government spending, regardless of

deservingness heuristics. By contrast, economically

secure young people, major welfare contributors, have

low levels of support for government spending on the

elderly, and they are more sensitive to deservingness

heuristics.

Policy Attitudes toward the Elderly

in Aging Societies

The world is rapidly aging. Figure 1 lists ten countries/

areas with the highest old-age dependency ratio estimated

in 2019 and projected in 2050. As of 2019, Japan stands

out in its rate of population aging with more than 10 per-

cent difference with the second oldest society, Finland.

Although the share of senior citizens in Japan, the case

this focuses on, currently outnumbers any other advanced

economies, population aging is not a unique challenge for

Japan, however. In 2050, the gap between Japan and

other countries is expected to be much smaller, with

South Korea, Spain, Greece, and Italy expected to have a

dependency ratio greater than 70 percent. The accelera-

tion of population aging that many advanced industrial

countries have faced has exacerbated labor scarcity and

increased the burden on government welfare efforts in

advanced industrial countries.

How are public attitudes toward the old formed in the

face of a high old-age dependency ratio? Theories in the

extant literature answer this question by pointing to three

conflicting motivating factors—empathy, and current and

prospective self-interest. First, informed by literature on

altruism and welfare deservingness, the intergenerational

solidarity hypothesis predicts that the public, even the

younger generation, tends to support increased govern-

ment assistance to the old due to the general stereotype of

senior citizens as deserving members of society. Unlike

groups such as the unemployed, because everyone ages,

people, even working-age individuals, can easily identify