The Role of Social Assistance in the Self-Sufficiency of the Poor: The Case of Türkiye from the Perspective of Social Assistance Inspection Officers

Abstract

Financial empowerment of the poor is a part of overall social development and is key in ensuring equality of opportunity and adding to social justice. One means to achieve such a goal may be social assistance practices. The ultimate goal of social assistance is to help the poor overcome their neediness and become self-sufficient through governmental in-kind and cash support. Thus, the present study attempts to uncover the impacts of social assistance on the poor in becoming self-sufficient in Türkiye from the perspective of social assistance inspection officers. Accordingly, we recruited 30 social assistance inspection officers across Türkiye using snowball sampling in the qualitative phase and 358 using stratified sampling in the quantitative phase. Descriptively presenting the qualitative data gathered through in-depth interviews, we collected the quantitative data using the Social Assistance Providers’ Perception of Social Assistance Scale. Overall, participating inspection officers’ opinions imply that the Turkish social assistance system leads beneficiaries to be alienated from registered employment, that the demand-based social assistance approach fortifies the culture of poverty, that the availability of various types of assistance programs leads to more people engaging in unregistered employment, and that social assistance has an indirect effect on the transmission of poverty across generations.