The Normative Construction of and Contestation over In-Work Benefits in Hong Kong: A Moral Economy Approach

Abstract

Informed by moral economy theories, this article presents a qualitative study of the normative construction of and contestation over a new in-work benefit in Hong Kong, the Low-income Working Family Allowance (LIFA). Using a policy stakeholder approach to examining the public’s ideas and justifications of LIFA, the findings reveal the eligibility-defined entitlement shared by claimants, scepticism towards long working hours conditionality required by LIFA, complex understanding of deservingness and self-reliance, and dissatisfaction with the closing gap between welfare and wages. This article connects moral economy theories to the normative basis of a social security system, offering insights for capturing the dynamics of consensus and controversies about social welfare. It also extends the research on morality and social welfare from Western countries to an Asian context. The case of Hong Kong evidences how policy stakeholders make moral sense of a new welfare in the absence of social right language.

Introduction

This article presents a qualitative study of the moral economy of an in-work benefit (IWB) in Hong Kong (HK). Drawing on moral economy theories, the author proposes a framework investigating the normative construction of and contestation over a new welfare benefit, the Low-income Working Family Allowance (LIFA), in relation to welfare and economy for empirical studies. Using a policy stakeholder approach to examine the moral ideas and justifications of LIFA, the findings reveal the eligibility-defined entitlement shared by claimants, scepticism towards the long working hours required by LIFA, complex understanding of welfare deservingness and self-reliance, and dissatisfaction with the closing gap between welfare and wages. This article makes two contributions to social policy studies. First, it connects moral economy theories to the normative basis of a social security system, offering insights for capturing the dynamics of shared and conflicted ideas about social welfare. Second, it extends the scope of research on morality and social welfare from Western countries to the Asian context. The case of HK’s LIFA evidences how policy stakeholders make moral sense of a new welfare in the absence of a strong sense of social citizenship, identifying similarities and differences between these policy contexts.

Indeed, the discussion about morality, normative ideas, and social welfare is not new to social policy (Deacon, 2002; Mau, 2003; Dean, 2007; Steensland, 2010; Spicker, 2013). The welfare state, as a moral actor, governs the poor via ‘moral auditing’ and moral framing of their behaviour (Culpitt, 1999). A set of literatures focuses on the moral implications of the welfare forms and specifically sheds light on the behavioural governance of the poor in the work-first approach to welfare conditionality (Dwyer, 2016; Peeters, 2019). The work-first activation is predominantly linked to contractualism and paternalism (Handler, 2004; White, 2010; Whitworth, 2016), which emphasises the compliance of welfare recipients with employment-related requirements and justifies the replacement of social rights with obligations. Recently, more scholars have addressed the ethical implications of expanded punitive conditionality and welfare sanctions (Watts and Fitzpatrick, 2018; Dwyer, 2020). These normative critiques tend to be centred on how welfare reforms impact citizenship and pay less attention to how the public perceives social welfare and explains social problems (Kevins et al., 2020). It is suggested that the deservingness of social groups signposts the complicated legitimation process and classification of worthiness among the poor (Van Oorschot and Roosma, 2017). Romano (2017) holds that the relationship between morality, public opinions, and the welfare state is still underexplored.

Drawing on these researches, the analytical approach to the morality of welfare should acknowledge the negotiation and contestation of normative ideas operating in particular political economy contexts (Greve, 2018; Carstensen and Hansen, 2019). Thus, the understandings of moral and normative ideas of welfare should go beyond both the expert-led and purely philosophical perspectives to include more public values and sentiments (Morris, 2016; Béland, 2018).

The moral economy perspectives on social welfare

The moral economy as an analytical framework underlines the (re)embedding of economy into morality in a broader socially-instituted process (Mau, 2003; Bolton and Laaser, 2013; Palomera and Vetta, 2016; Sayer, 2018; Koos and Sachweh, 2019). Its theoretical roots can be traced back to the riots against food poverty in the seventeenth century in the UK and Southeast Asia, which were driven not only by material needs but also by a set of broken promises about the customs of labour rights and responsibilities (Thompson, 1971; Scott, 1976). The moral foundation of the resistance to economic appropriation and political subordination demonstrates that all economies are inherently moral economies, reflecting the ‘always embeddedness’ of morality in economic practices (Polanyi, 1944; Booth, 1994; Block and Somers, 2014). The moral economy, hence, emphasises the inseparability between materialistic self-interest and non-materialistic values (Sayer, 2011; Bolton and Laaser, 2013; Morris, 2016).

The first body of literature on moral economy and social policy addresses the relationship between morality, public opinions, and welfare attitudes (Mau, 2003; Van Oorschot and Roosma, 2017; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019). The notion of moral economy entails the judgement of economic systems by top-down normative principles for right or wrong, and examines the value schema in terms of conflicts and consensus from below (Clarke and Newman, 2012; Sachweh, 2012; Götz, 2015; Palomera and Vetta, 2016; Fouksman, 2020). Accordingly, the moral economy connects the normative discourses of welfare to the public’s diverse attitudes, resulting in the coexistence of hegemonic ideas and contradictory values (Mau, 2003; Palomera and Vetta, 2016). In other words, all social exchange activities, state redistribution, and economic inequalities are filtered by ordinary people’s everyday reasoning. For instance, the moral embeddedness of labour market is associated with workers’ sense-making of their employment experiences (Bolton and Laaser, 2013), shaped by a variety of social norms.

The second body of literature adopts the moral economy approach to investigate the role of normative ideas and justification in different fields of social policy (Morris, 2016; Carstensen and Hansen, 2019). On one hand, they unveil the ideational foundation and organising normative principles underlying welfare policies, delving into the moral meanings and power dynamics within welfare justification (Hansen, 2019). Drawing on the ideational and discursive institutionalism (Schmidt, 2008; Greve, 2018), this perspective foregrounds the ideational heterogeneity of morality and the competing norms underneath the ‘repertories of evaluation’ from the critical mass (Béland, 2018; Carstensen and Hansen, 2019), including problem-defining, causal beliefs, and framing languages. On the one hand, it puts policy ideas as normative principles and hierarchies of worthiness that qualify and legitimise welfare policies (Hansen, 2019); on the other hand, actors’ evaluations and justifications lay the ground of moral dynamics embedding the policies (Sayer, 2018). This framework pinpoints the analytical roles of moral ideas and justification in social policy studies instead of suggesting moral critiques or mapping public opinions (Hansen, 2019).

While the two approaches place varying emphasis on the moral economy of welfare, they share a common principle in understanding the complexities of welfare policies’ normative basis in relation to (re)distribution and power. It is suggested that the moral ideas and institutionalised rules from above are subject to citizens’ re-interpretation and re-negotiation from below (Koos and Sachweh, 2019). Ideas and legitimation of welfare become a site of contestation among policy actors. Public’s expectations on welfare can shape policy priorities, whilst the institutions in turn entrench normative ideas (Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019). Fouksman (2020) argues that citizens’ welfare expectations and policy demands cannot be reduced to the idea of ‘false-consciousness’. Hence, the moral imperatives governing the poor’s behaviour tend to be shaky and sometimes broken (Romano, 2017; Sayer, 2018). The ruling parties tend to de-contest the ‘contestable’ by consolidating the consensus about livelihood. This puts pressure on the government to continually legitimise welfare reforms in the face of challenges (Carstensen and Hansen, 2019).

Combining the two approaches to moral economy of welfare, there are three analytical dimensions that are central to analysing ideas and justifications of social policy. Firstly, the moral economy of welfare involves weighting the relative importance and preference of social policies (Sayer, 2018), resulting in the demarcation of deservingness based on the moral distinction among income sources. The legitimation and commitment of social welfare are linked to the stratification that ranks the worthiness of assistance to different social categories (Mau, 2003). Steensland (2010) suggests that the normative hierarchies behind welfare provisions in terms of deservingness links the distribution of life chances to the compliance with dominant values.

Secondly, the moral economy of welfare contains citizens’ perceived unfairness and defined injustice in relation to different communities, workplaces, and social policies (Bolton and Laaser, 2013). The moral outrage can result from disrespectful experiences in everyday life and from the contravention of social norms (Steensland, 2010; Sachweh, 2012). These values can reinforce and/or challenge the institutional logic of welfare as they draw the public’s attention to the appropriate roles of state, market, and society (van Oorschot and Roosma, 2017; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019).

Finally, the moral economy of welfare defines social relations in terms of a set of entitlement and obligation. Sayer (2018) suggests that who gives and takes becomes a key question for building trustful and reciprocal relationships at the societal level (Koos and Sachweh, 2019). In other words, the preferred rich-poor, taxpayer-recipients, and state-citizen relations embody the formulations of welfare rights and responsibilities (Mau, 2003; Clarke and Newman, 2012).

Rather than using normative and prescriptive principles to criticise social policies as immoral, the three analytical dimensions of moral economy extend beyond the questions of what should or should not be but formulate an analytical framework for examining welfare ideas and justification (Hansen, 2019). The increasing attention to the moral economy approach to welfare highlights the significance of moral legitimation that ties the material motives and normative values of policy stakeholders (Sayer, 2018; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019).

A moral economy approach to understanding in-work benefits

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2011: 67) defines in-work benefits (IWBs) as ‘permanent work-contingent tax credits, tax allowances or equivalent work-contingent benefit schemes designed with the dual purposes of alleviating in-work poverty and increasing work incentives for low-income workers’. It is also suggested that IWBs are part of the ‘make work pay’ strategy to increase the relative adequacy of the working poor’s income (Marchal and Marx, 2018). IWBs are used to enlarge the extensive and intensive margins that boost the poor’s incentives to work and to work longer (Neumark, 2016; Vandelannoote and Verbist, 2020). Despite that the neoliberal conditionality agenda and behavioural paradigm extend from the unemployed to the working poor (Millar, 2018; Peeters, 2019), the instrumental functions of tax credits in poverty reduction in the UK and US have been confirmed (Hick and Lanau, 2019; Tach et al., 2019). However, Rooney and Gray (2020) reveal that IWBs in the work-first welfare regime could perpetuate the gendered division of labour in existing breadwinner models with respect to family care responsibilities.

Although IWBs bring welfare and work together, it is surprising that few studies adopt the moral economy approach when analysing IWBs’ moral politics. Carstensen and Hansen (2019) suggest that the introduction of in-work benefits into the minimum income system in France justifies both the intensified welfare sanctions for non-compliance and the poverty of the workless population. With regard to their moral meanings, on one hand, IWBs are considered as the less painful policy for the poor because the wage supplement motivates the working poor to accept jobs available in the low-end labour market (Dean, 2012; Clegg, 2015). On the other hand, some Working Tax Credit claimants in the UK may internalise workfarist discourses that admire economically productive and ‘self-reliant’ workers compared to out-of-work benefit recipients (Dean, 2012). IWBs are, hence, deemed as a welcome relief for the working poor; however, they also represent an ethically-flawed subsidy that reproduces exploitative employment relations and downplays the importance of employers’ obligations (Dean, 2012). This also occurs in the US, where some recipients do not consider the Earned Income Tax Credit as ‘welfare’ and blame the ‘welfare lifestyle’ on the unemployed (Halpern-Meekin et al., 2015). Without coercion and sanction, claiming IWBs is seen as voluntary and respectful to the disadvantaged. IWBs arguably can improve self-perceived citizenship and reduce claimants’ stigma (Sykes et al., 2015), but the over-emphasis on labour market participation and obligation as the entitlement potentially wipes out the rights-based foundation of social protection (Peeters, 2019). The moral justification of IWBs, therefore, is far from straightforward because such welfare incentives or compensation could complement the punitive measures in comprising the building block of a multi-faceted conditionality regime. Welfare incentives and rewards can be practised as a ‘throffer’: a threat coupled with an offer (Watts and Fitzpatrick, 2018: 49).

The ‘throffer’ complicates the actual and perceived moral roles of IWBs in poverty reduction associated with low pay; this calls for a more holistic framework to investigate IWBs’ moral construction and contestation.

The case of in-work benefits in Hong Kong

This article illustrates how the moral economy framework can be applied in the analysis of the case of IWBs in HK. The significance of this case is that it demonstrates an uncommon welfare expansion in HK’s residual and productivist welfare model (Chan, 2011; Kim, 2015), which yields a range of normative debates in policymaking regarding the appropriateness and righteousness of IWBs in the context of a liberal market economy and familial ideology (Au-Yeung, 2019). Thus, the HK case is a good example to connect the moral economy notion and IWBs by expanding the dimensions of moral construction of and contestation over social policy in a non-Western context.

The HK government launched LIFA (renamed Working Family Allowance in 2018) as a new IWB in 2014 and implemented it in 2016, to relieve the financial burden of low-income working households; encourage workers to stay employed, promote self-reliance, and prevent them from entering the social safety net; and help alleviate inter-generational poverty and promote upward mobility in the long run (Leung, 2014). Therefore, LIFA is primarily designed to reward working poor families and ensure their continuing low paid employment via incentives. Although different from the tax credits systems in the UK and US, the application for LIFA in HK requires claimants to provide proof of income and assets with completed application forms for eligibility review.

LIFA is a means-tested income support independent from social assistance. In addition to its half-year basis for application and delivery, LIFA’s distinctness lies in its combined in-work conditionality and generosity. Workers with 192 monthly working hours (initially 208 hours) or above are rewarded the Higher Allowance under this system; workers whose working hours fall between 191 and 168 are entitled to the Medium Allowance; those with working hours between 167 and 144 qualify for the Basic Allowance (Working Family Allowance Office, 2020). Despite the shorter working hours’ requirement for lone parents, LIFA promotes full-time work as a condition for entitlement. This arrangement was designed in times of a burgeoning labour market and high labour demands, alongside HK’s deep-rooted residual welfare ideologies embedded in the market productivist regime (Kim, 2015). Despite a common emphasis on rewarding work discipline and low pay employment, LIFA pays more attention than its counterparts to supplementing the incomes of full-time and low-wage workers. While whether the introduction of LIFA as a working-age benefit signposts path dependence or is path-breaking remains unanswered, the article may offer some insights.

Methods

The increasing attention to the moral economy approach to welfare highlights the significance of moral legitimation that ties the material motives and normative values of policy stakeholders who are engaged differently in social policies with varying interests and views (Sayer, 2018; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019). As such, the present study adopted a policy stakeholder approach to integrating relevant and diversified voices from various social roles (Dwyer, 2020), wherein stakeholders, for instance, elites and claimants, may hold shared and contested narratives. This could contribute to a more holistic understanding of IWBs’ moral economy.

Two research questions appear to guide the study: (1) How do policy stakeholders think about the entitlement and conditionality of IWBs in HK? (2) In what ways do policy stakeholders justify the provision of IWBs to the working poor? Informed by three analytical dimensions of welfare’s moral economy, the author proposes a conceptual framework to answer these questions by exploring four domains of moral ideas and justifications of IWBs in HK (Figure 1). Welfare entitlement explicates policy stakeholders’ views on IWBs’ policy objectives and the justification of workers’ access to IWBs. The work obligation delves into how the stakeholders understand the conditionality demanded by LIFA. Welfare deservingness refers to how the worthiness of claimants is valued. As IWBs marry welfare with work, their moral economy should include stakeholders’ perception about labour market. Together, they present four building blocks of the moral economy of IWB in the present study.

Figure 1. Conceptual framework

The study adopted qualitative methods to gather in-depth and meaningful findings to answer the three questions. The case study of the policy stakeholders’ conception of LIFA in HK aimed to explore the uniqueness and dynamics of the moral economy of welfare in a real-life context (Simons, 2009). For data collection, semi-structured interviews were conducted, and purposive sampling, a method of pragmatically selecting data in line with the research questions, was employed, which maximised the richness and variety of information (Flick, 2014; Schreier, 2018). Based on the policy stakeholder approach and purposive sampling methods, the sampling criteria were employed to include five groups of interviewees who had central relevance to LIFA. The criteria of selecting policymakers were based on the engagement in government bodies responsible for promoting the policy development of LIFA. Policymakers eventually were recruited from the Commission on Poverty, the Commission on Minimum Wage and the Legislative Council. The distinguishing characteristic of the second group was they were claimants of LIFA, who held first-hand experiences and views about the benefits. As the literature suggests that employers could also be the beneficiaries of IWBs, employers providing low paid jobs from the labour-intensive service sectors constituted the criteria of the third group. Welfare right campaigners advocating LIFA were also selected because they initiated a set of discursive strategies to seek the public’s support for LIFA. The criteria of the last group were the practitioners of employment services who were expected to use LIFA as the work incentives for the unemployed. Bringing together these five groups of policy actors could amplify the diverse voices and interests embedded in IWBs.

The research targeted interviewees aged eighteen or above. Interviewees were recruited through convenient and snowball sampling, coupled with some referrals from non-governmental organisations. Each interview lasted one to one-and-a-half hours, and they were recorded and transcribed by the researcher. The questionnaires were pre-designed based on the interview guidelines with general and specific questions for different groups; all questions concerned their perceptions and/or experiences related to LIFA. A total of thirty people across five categories were interviewed, as summarised in Table 1. The gender of interviewees was not evenly distributed given few female policymakers and practitioner respondents. Moreover, the background of the claimants is shown in Table 2.

Table 1. Five Categories of Respondents

Table 2. Background of the LIFA claimants

The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim for thematic coding and analysis. Theoretical and open coding was employed for two rounds of data analysis. Firstly, informed by the conceptual framework, the researcher searched the texts via some relevant codes under the four sub-domains, such as ‘employment’ and ‘working hours’ under the domain of ‘work obligation’. Secondly, the researcher also read through the transcript to map out emerging codes to formulate new themes, such as the ‘welfare-wage gap’ and the varying notions of ‘self-reliance’. After two rounds of coding, the researcher weighted the relative importance of different themes and categorised them under the four domains of framework which offered new information and meanings. To ensure the quality and reliability of the thematic analysis, the researcher noted any repetition, similarities, and controversies of narratives (Guest et al, 2012). The verbatim quotes shown in the data analysis were carefully translated from Cantonese to English.

Results

Based on the moral economy framework, the following sub-sections detail some key findings from interviews according to four categories of themes.

Eligibility-defined and fiscally-appropriate entitlement

While the benefit claimants of LIFA comprised the main stakeholder group, the meanings of receiving LIFA were the point of departure. Some claimants tied their entitlement to their eligibility and employment performance. Given HK’s residual and semi-democratic regime (Chan, 2011), it was unsurprising that the working poor did not uphold the language of social rights. The message was clear that they could not make a living relying on wages alone, and they felt justified in seeking income support.

The wage was too low when there was no effective minimum wage. Some suggested that we exit employment and apply for social assistance. My family struggled on it but eventually thought it was not good…. The use of LIFA was fine because I was working, I have tried my best, but I can’t help it. (Claimant A, female, aged forty-two, security guard)

Some explained that they applied for LIFA as a matter of entitlement simply because they met the eligibility criteria established by the government, and not applying would be ‘wasteful’ of public resources. Thus, applying for LIFA was regarded as acceptable and a natural response to the government’s new welfare policy.

I think I’m eligible for this benefit, so I apply and don’t let it be wasted. It can be a supplement to my family’s expenses and I am really eligible for it…. LIFA is a subsidy for an eligible family with employment. I have a job and am eligible, so why not? (Claimant F, male, aged fifty-one, logistic worker)

In other words, entitlement to LIFA was defined by the eligibility established by the government, which was entirely subject to the government bureaucrats’ political will and policy design. Entitlement to LIFA is far from the notion of social citizenship and rights but depends on the government’s policy approach and benefits coverage. This eligibility-defined entitlement is also related to the fiscal conditions and public spending pattern of the government.

In my opinion, we don’t need to ‘save’ the government’s money. Once they launched the eligibility, just take it if you are eligible. The government won’t thank you and won’t save the money for you but may otherwise misuse it. The labelling effect is not strong for me because I am not abusing it but totally eligible. (Claimant D, male, aged thirty-nine, metal hardware worker)

Introducing and claiming LIFA was considered an appropriate act against the backdrop of accumulating fiscal reserves and imprudent public spending. The perceived appropriateness of LIFA involved the dissatisfaction and distrust of the HK government’s continual budgetary surplus and the ways LIFA redistributed resources (Fong, 2015). LIFA, as a policy option to divert public resources, was accepted because it targeted a social group with genuine needs. These policy expectations about eligibility definitions and fiscal appropriateness mirrored the poor’s justification of entitlement: the claimants supported the policy choice of introducing IWB but challenged the fiscal policies of the HK government. In this connection, the reasoning behind LIFA was tied to the emphasis on the deservingness of the working poor.

Scepticism about the design of the working hours’ conditionality

The government’s rationale was clear, that LIFA was aimed at helping full-time workers and that part-time workers were not entitled to the benefit. The underlying logic was that taking a part-time job in a buoyant labour market was a personal choice that did not show sufficient commitment to employment.

The government defines her role in helping people who attempt full-time jobs. It would be their own choice not to work full time. The government thinks that they should help full-time workers who cannot be self-sufficient whilst those working poor without full-time jobs are unjustified to receive help. (Policymaker C)

Whilst some recipients with longer working hours welcomed the working hours’ requirement, some disagreed with the arrangement of promoting long working hours. The implication was that LIFA was a means to compensate the low wages and overwork instead of caring about the difficulties confronting the working poor. In other words, LIFA was deemed as a poverty relief to incentivise the poor to work longer, and working long hours was the only way to receive a higher allowance from the government.

It depends on the family’s situation. For me, I really can’t work so long because of care responsibilities. It would be a trade-off between providing care and working longer. We agree that people should work in society. But it is still disputable as some families cannot work so long. LIFA does not consider whether people can work so much or not. If you launch a new policy, at least give people a choice. (Claimant H, male, aged forty, sales worker)

Apart from family care duties, there were other difficulties in meeting the higher working hours’ requirement, such as the lack of paid leave especially in the month of February. Some recipients explained that they were not allowed to take any break or sick leave if they applied for the higher allowance of LIFA. Therefore, LIFA assumed uninterrupted, full-time employment for the poor, which might not always be possible. Some suggested that the entitlement to LIFA was precarious because it depended on the health conditions of workers, which could not be guaranteed under a high work intensity.

I think the benefits are unstable. Yes, you may lose them because of sickness as they just focus on working hours…. It is senseless sticking to the 192 hours. Even my wife works over 280 hours per month, but if she gets sick in one month then she may not be eligible. It is unfair. (Claimant C)

Briefly, the working hours’ requirement of LIFA featured the prioritisation of full time work and overwork that downplayed the challenges faced by the working poor, which was perceived as unfair by some claimants. Although LIFA might represent a step towards poverty reduction, the government’s targeting of the working poor is narrowly defined.

Consensus on deservingness of the working poor but contestation over ‘self-reliance’

Overall, there was general support about the deservingness of the working poor, acknowledging their worthiness for receiving IWBs from the government. Respondents, however, held contrasting justifications of the origins of their deservingness based on their different interpretations of work ethic and ‘self-reliance’.

The first of these justifications rested on the absolute sense of work ethic and unreserved support for ‘self-reliance’, with a central focus on the individualised obligations of the poor. Although the government attached great importance to work responsibilities in welfare provision and poverty alleviation, ‘self-reliance’ was a construct of the HK people’s spirit (Leung, 2014). This view was considerably echoed by some employer interviewees, alongside the intrinsic value of work per se.

I agree that people should be independent and make their own living. Work is not only for income but also for the social network, dignity, acceptance, and development. What if you are on the scrounge and the government still helps you? From the perspective on business, the goals of LIFA make sense. (Social enterprise employer)

I like the word ‘self-reliance’. I think Chinese people also support it. We need dignity as a decent life. (Catering employer)

Accordingly, work, regardless of its nature, necessarily provided material and non-material benefits to the poor. Moreover, it was a personal choice for the poor to work and only those who opt for hard work deserved assistance. This logic was reconciled with the HK government’s work-first approach to welfare and downplayed the importance of the job quality (Wong and Au-Yeung, 2019). The legitimacy of LIFA, therefore, lied in the moral virtues displayed by the working poor, although LIFA somewhat departed from the purist form of ‘self-reliance’ given that the poor still needed state benefits.

The second of these justifications represented relativist views on work ethic and ‘situated self-reliance’. Some respondents did not challenge work ethic, but they emphasised the broken promise and linkage between work ethic and self-reliance. In other words, it was assumed that work per se could not be proved by its intrinsic value but rather should be judged by the actual economic advantage it generated: the extent work makes workers self-reliant.

The most serious poverty belongs to families with an employed person and children. It is unacceptable and immoral because the families work enough yet still can’t maintain their life. I think we should help them. It was the point of departure for LIFA. (Policymaker E)

It was suggested that work was not a panacea to poverty alleviation, given the real situations faced by the poor. Of vital importance was the viewpoint that in-work poverty was wrong and unfair because it dismissed the moral ground of work ethic grounded in ‘self-reliance’. By introducing LIFA, work ethic could be rescued by topping up the incomes of workers. However, the problems of low pay and in-work poverty cannot be divorced from wage and cost of living issues facing workers in HK.

‘Self-reliance’ means that families can rely on themselves without the support of the government. It is basically impossible given rising rent as well as other expenses. If the government promotes employment and alleviates poverty, they should give you an allowance to lift your income. Yet it is annoying to call this ‘self-reliant’. (Claimant C, female, aged forty-six, restaurant worker)

Self-reliance is important for people to feel their worthiness. However, can a job solve workers’ problems? Put simply, if their job can provide their living, why did the government initiate IWBs? If my wage is enough for me, I won’t apply for it. Should I work two jobs? (Claimant G, female, aged fifty-five, cleaning worker)

From the eyes of claimants, wage inadequacy and unaffordable living costs were the primary drivers of failed ‘self-reliance’ that pushed them towards LIFA. This notion of work ethic made hard work and reward a fair exchange, and any breach of this contract required intervention. Interestingly, only campaigners for social and labour rights attributed the failure of ‘self-reliance’ to the injustices of employment relations and government policies. The rhetoric of self-reliance and work ethic was viewed as the management of the working class and poor in favour of employers and corporations.

This kind of work ethic is monolithic, which is in line with the mainstream pro-market and pro-business ideas…. The media always promotes overwork as a model of self-reliance and the Hong Kong Spirit. This work ethic politically conceals the government’s obligation in wealth redistribution and the deep-rooted causes of income disparity. (Campaigner C, union organiser)

As Campaigner C held that the structural causes of in-work poverty were not addressed and solved via LIFA, it was argued that the primacy of self-reliance and work ethic individualised public responsibilities and diverted society’s attention away from wage and market inequalities. Drawing on these findings, LIFA as an earned income source ensured the deservingness of the working poor (Sayer, 2018). However, controversies appeared among stakeholders about the justification of deservingness (Beechey, 2016; Romano, 2017; van Oorschot and Roosma, 2017). The government and employers tended to unreservedly support a simplistic notion of work ethic and self-reliance, whilst other stakeholders had more relational views that recognised structural constraints and the broken promise between work ethic and self-reliance.

Perceived unfairness concerning the closing gap between welfare and wages

In light of work-centred deservingness, some policy stakeholders linked LIFA and the working poor to the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA), which is HK’s social assistance. For employers, out-of-work benefits were considered over-generous to the unemployed, which undermined work incentives and allowed them the capacity to freely select jobs. Unemployment benefits for the able-bodied were depicted as a work disincentive that was counter-productive to the poor.

It is unfair because the difference between the incomes of CSSA and the working poor is too small. People on the job should have incomes that are higher than CSSA, which is more reasonable and fair…. If the policy cannot push the unemployed to work, they will become a long-term burden to the social welfare. (Cleaning service employer)

Regarding the relationship between welfare and wages, some policy stakeholders believed that IWBs were possible solutions for the government to preserve the gap between welfare and wages. To a certain extent, they agreed that there should be a gap that would be fair to working people, but the political reality prevented the government from raising the minimum wage.

CSSA should maintain the basic living needs of the neediest people regardless of the market wage level. I also agree that the wage should reflect a more appropriate standard of living. However, the current setting of the minimum wage somehow is determined by too many structural factors so it is relatively lower. (Policymaker C)

As a result, advocacy for LIFA resorted to the moral idea that the shrinking income differentials between CSSA recipients and low wage workers were improper. The continual existence of in-work poverty jeopardised the social contract between hard work and reward, but the ideal relationship could be restored via LIFA.

I think LIFA could play the role of maintaining the gap between welfare-work…. Its promotional campaigns emphasised that it was morally unacceptable for the working income to be lower than CSSA. (Campaigner A)

Against the backdrop of low pay, the introduction of LIFA seemed to be a natural and convenient policy response for a fiscally capable government to sustain the gap. Nonetheless, there were also cautious voices about the reasonableness of such ‘welfare-work differentials’ because such ideas could be ‘dangerous’ as they could lead to a race to the bottom effect.

It might be reasonable that the wage is higher than welfare in general…. Yet this notion can also justify a conservative government to curtail benefits in times of economic downturn and wage cut, with the accusation of over-generous welfare. Therefore, the support for increasing the welfare-wage gap can be dangerous. (Policymaker F)

In sum, the agenda of expanding the welfare-wage gap via LIFA entailed two sets of opinions. Similar to findings of previous studies (Dean, 2012; Halpern-Meekin et al., 2015; Sykes et al., 2015), the first displayed antagonism towards unemployment benefits, which basically reflected the ‘less eligibility’ principle with a more humane appearance. The second challenged the righteousness of such an agenda but pragmatically supported LIFA to increase the income of the working poor. These two sets of ideas implicitly converged and reached a consensus to push for LIFA.

Discussion

This article adopts the moral economy framework to study the ideas and justification of LIFA in HK (Hansen, 2019). Overall, the findings revealed some homogeneity in the shared support to the working poor’s entitlement and welfare deservingness; on the other hand, heterogeneity appeared in the justifications of in-work conditionality and welfare-wage gap (Hansen, 2019). In terms of research question (1), the data revealed that the entitlement for LIFA was eligibility-defined and fiscally appropriated. Despite the lack of social right language and concepts, it was suggested that the capable government should devote more resources to assist the working poor instead of other ‘wasteful’ uses. It was widely accepted that, including employers’ views, the government was responsible for meeting the basic needs of the working poor given the unaffordable living costs. Whilst the conditionality of LIFA on paid work was generally supported as a targeting tool for the working poor, the extent of conditionality was contested over the requirement for long working hours. Although some policymakers and fulltime workers agreed with such arrangements, some respondents suggested that LIFA ignored precarious workers’ family care duties and health issues. The underlying policy ideas of LIFA were seen as promoting overwork but downplaying the structural barriers of full-time employment.

As for research question (2), the data revealed that respondents conceived the social category of the working poor as a deserved beneficiary, who were legitimised to claim LIFA according to diverse notions of self-reliance and the moral testing of work ethic. Nevertheless, workers with longer working hours, based on the policy design, were considered morally worthier than others owing to the stratified conditionality of LIFA’s allowances. Meanwhile, respondents cast doubt about the shrinking gap between welfare and wages in different ways: one employer assumed that it was due to overgenerous social assistance, but others attributed it to low wage. Regardless of the justification logics, LIFA was deemed as a necessary tool to address in-work poverty and create a work incentive for low paid employment.

Some policy implications are suggested. The introduction of LIFA basically continued the work-first approach for the activation of the unemployed in HK and applied it to the working poor. This was underpinned by a set of ideas that supported the self-reliance ethos and justified LIFA differently. While these ideas continued to embody HK’s long-lasting work-centred welfare ideology, the justifications demonstrated some degree of ideational path-breaking that called for a stronger state role in ensuring the welfare-wage gap and retaining the self-reliance ethos, which departed from the general low expectation of the government in the past decades (Au-Yeung, 2019). Although policy stakeholders’ views on the appropriateness of working hours requirement and causes of welfare-wage gap diverged, they converged to legitimise better income protection for in-work poverty even in the context of the liberal labour market and residual welfare model. This made the case of HK unique as the shared legitimation of IWBs was driven by contested views on self-reliance and welfare-work nexus in the absence of social right ideas, reflecting the complexities of welfare ideas and justifications (Hansen, 2019).

Also, while the working poor was generally perceived as deserving compared to the unemployed, their deservingness was defined by their working hours and the stratified entitlement of LIFA. This mode of ‘hierarchical deservingness’ went beyond a simple dichotomy between deserving and undeserving (Beechey, 2016; van Oorschot and Roosma, 2017), through which some working poor who worked shorter were ranked as less deserving than others. Consequently, income inequality among workers would be worsened in light of work intensity. In this sense, IWBs disciplined the deserving poor via wage subsidies and working hours’ conditionality without imposing welfare sanctions (Clegg, 2015). IWBs’ positive appearance concealed their ‘throffer’ nature (Watts and Fitzpatrick, 2018), and the behavioural conditionality may undermine social citizenship by taking social right out of the entitlement to income protection (Dean, 2012; Sykes et al., 2015).

Overall, this research provides two contributions. First, it is the first qualitative study to apply the moral economy framework in studying the public’s views on IWBs, including the dynamics of consensus and contestation. This research reveals the complexity and multiplicity of moral dimensions of welfare provision via empirical data (Mau, 2003; Sachweh, 2012; Sayer, 2018; Hansen, 2019; Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019), by identifying the moral basis and challenges surrounding a social security system. Second, it investigates the morality of welfare and economy in a non-Western society, highlighting the importance of deservingness and perceived unfairness in the HK context. Of course, the major limitation of this research lies in the qualitative methodology, which cannot generate representative findings and patterns of citizens’ normative ideas. Nevertheless, the moral economy framework is still relevant for future research, particularly quantitative studies, on the relationship between social security, moral ideas, and market institutions.