Social Investment and the Matthew Effect

There are reasons to assume that spending on social investment is more susceptible to Matthew Effects than spending on social protection. Due to the gravity of social and cultural stratification, more vulnerable segments of societies tend to find it hard to navigate their way to the educational system, the labour market, and public services. Therefore, although social investment strategies have the potential to mitigate social and cultural inequalities, spending on capacitating services will tend to be more beneficial to the middle and upper classes, thereby creating an adverse redistribution of resources. This unintended and reinforcing effect has been shown by empirical research on the benefits of childcare, parental leave, some active labour-market policies, and higher education. Appropriate policy designs may reduce such adverse effects, but are unlikely to eliminate them completely. This requires that redistributive and protective issues should be firmly addressed in policy and discourse.