Social dependents: political tale and scientific reality

Abstract

Russian society's fear of the social dependents’ hegemony is similar to an analogical fear in the political discourse of Western countries. Opponents of the concept of the social state criticize it for its tendency to multiply the masses of freeloaders. However, evidence from foreign research’s show that most of the common myths about the "class of lazybones living on welfare benefits" haven’t the factual basis. The author's discovery confirms that the problem of "social dependency" is extremely overestimate. The number of people who could be classified as social dependents is minimal, as is the damage to society from their activities. Despite this fact, right- liberal politicians use the mass dependency fear to justify the implementation of the sequestering the state's social responsibility policy and to increase hardness the order of support to the poor. If Russian society gets rid of the irrational fear of mass social dependency, it won’t become a victim of such political manipulation.

Keywords

• social dependency
• poverty
• social problems
• welfare state
• social recipients