Improving the disadvantaged situation of social assistance recipients

A combination of health problems, financial challenges and feelings of exclusion. Those are some of the disadvantages social assistance recipients tend to struggle with. In order to develop interventions that improve recipients’ situation, it is necessary to understand how these disadvantages can be reduced.

A research team, consisting of Lincy Scholten, Gerdine Fransen-Kuppens, Renée de Vet, Judith Wolf (Department of Primary and Community Care, Radboudumc), János Betkó (Department of Public Administration, Radboud University) and Maurice Gesthuizen (Radboud Social Cultural Research, Radboud University), therefore studied how these health, financial and social disadvantages are related over time. They published their results in Social Science & Medicine on 14 March 2023.

Using data of a social experiment with social assistance recipients in the Municipality of Nijmegen, they found that recipients’ financial problems and feelings of belonging in society did not affect their mental health. This contrasts previous studies based on students and the general population. In turn, a better mental health predicted both an increase in recipients’ feelings of belonging in society one and two years later, and a decrease in their financial problems one year later.

Most importantly, these findings highlight that the mental health of recipients should be improved to reduce their financial and social disadvantages. They also emphasize just how little is known about recipients and how they can best be helped, as research based on other populations is not necessarily generalizable to this group. Since recipients themselves best understand their complex situation and needs, it is crucial that researchers, policy makers and social work professionals start by asking them what they think is needed to improve their situation. At the moment, the researchers have set out to answer exactly that research question.

Read the study here 

Scholten, L., Betkó, J., Gesthuizen, M., Fransen-Kuppens, G., De Vet, R., & Wolf, J. (2023). Reciprocal relations between financial hardship, sense of societal belonging and mental health for social assistance recipients. Social Science & Medicine, 321, 115781.