Preferences for Market-Based Welfare: Disentangling the role of merit and privilege beliefs in Chile

---

Andreas Laffert, Juan Carlos Castillo, René Canales &
Tomás Urzúa

Department of Sociology, University of Chile

WARN Online Workshop: Methods in Welfare Attitudes Research - June 2026

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Andreas Laffert, I’m a sociologist from Chile, and today I’ll present a work we have been developing with Juan Carlos Castillo, René Canales, and Tomás Urzúa, titled “Preferences for market-based welfare: dis-en-TÁNG-glin the role of merit and privilege beliefs in Chile.” We are very pleased to present our work at this workshop, and we look forward to your comments and feedback.

Context and motivation

Background

1. Privatization and marketization of public goods, welfare policies, and social services (Gingrich, 2011; Streeck, 2016)

2. Changes in the institutional architecture of the welfare state; expansion of market logics (Busemeyer & Iversen, 2020; Ferre, 2023)

3. This economic order is reflected in a specific moral economy and policy feedback dynamics (Campbell, 2020; Fernandez & Jaime-Castillo, 2013; Mau, 2015)

Market justice preferences (Busemeyer, 2015; Castillo et al., 2025; Koos & Sachweh, 2019; Lindh, 2015)

So, let me start with a little context.

Since the 1980s, many welfare states have experienced a rollback of universal welfare provision and moved toward the privatization and commodification of several public goods and social services.

These reforms expanded the role of private actors and pushed market logic into domains previously governed by the state, such as healthcare, education, and pensions.

This transformation has gradually shifted risk from the collective to the individual. And as the policy feedback literature argues, these market-based institutions do not just deliver services; they also feed back into public attitudes about what kón-sti-tyuts a fair basis for allocation.

PAblic opinion research has long ig-ZÁM-ind this link through the lens of redistributive preferences. More recently, it has begun asking how far citizens consider it fair for access to welfare to depend on market criteria, such as the ability to pay. That is what we call market-justice preferences, and here we study their relationship with meritocratic beliefs.

Research question and argument

RQ: How do perceptions and preferences of meritocracy and privilege shape support for market-based welfare in Chile?

Argument: Commodification reshapes deservingness principles, and its contributory logic foregrounds merit, making meritocratic beliefs a key driver of market justice preferences (Castillo et al., 2026, 2025). We examine their multiple faces.

So our research question is: how do perceptions and preferences of meritocracy and privilege shape support for market-based welfare in Chile?

Our argument runs as follows. The moral basis reshaped by commodification is, concretely, the deservingness principles by which citizens judge who deserves what and why. As access shifts to a contributory logic, based on ability to pay, merit becomes the criterion that logic foregrounds. That is why meritocratic beliefs are a key driver of market justice preferences. With this team, we’ve shown consistently in Chile that perceiving society as rewarding effort goes hand in hand with support for market-based welfare. Here we push further: a multidimensional lens on the different faces of meritocracy.

Multidimensional framework of meritocracy

Castillo et al. (2023) conceptual model

To capture these different faces of meritocracy, we use a multidimensional framework that expands the usual way meritocracy is measured in empirical research.

Multidimensional framework of meritocracy

Castillo et al. (2023) conceptual model

Most studies focus only on meritocratic perceptions, that is, whether people believe that effort and ability are actually rewarded in society. This is represented in the upper-left corner of the diagram.

Multidimensional framework of meritocracy

Castillo et al. (2023) conceptual model

What this model adds is, first, a distinction between perceptions and preferences, where perceptions refer to how people think society works and preferences refer to how they think it should work. This is represented in the upper-right corner using the same items, but with a normative sense.

Multidimensional framework of meritocracy

Castillo et al. (2023) conceptual model

Second, it also incorporates non-meritocratic elements, captured through items on family wealth and social connections, both of which are shown at the bottom of the diagram. We call this dimension privilege.

Multidimensional framework of meritocracy

Castillo et al. (2023) conceptual model

So, in total, the scale distinguishes four dimensions: perceived meritocracy, perceived privilege, preference for meritocracy, and acceptance of privilege. This means that recognizing privilege is not incompatible with supporting merit. Both can coexist within the same belief system.

Also, you can see the two items for each factor, all measured on a four-point agreement scale.

Hypotheses

Figure 1: Hypothesis

This leads to four hypotheses.

We argue that higher meritocratic perception relates positively to market justice; higher meritocratic preference, also positively; and higher privilege perception, negatively. The fourth — acceptance of privilege — we treat as exploratory, with no precedent in the field.

Data

• EDUMERCO: Online survey (CAWI), fielded in 2025, with adult respondents from the Metropolitan Region of Chile

• Non-probability sample with quota-based design
  → approximating population parameters by age, gender, education, and socioeconomic status

• Total sample: N = 3,470

• Analytical sample: N = 2,521

For this analysis, we use data from an online CAWI survey conducted in two thousand twenty-five among adolts in the Metropolitan Region of Chile. The resulting analytical sample consisted of two thousand five hundred and twenty-one individuals.

Results

CFA

Figure 2: Confirmatory factor analysis

Now to the analysis. We proceed in two steps.

First, we estimate a confirmatory factor analysis of the multidimensional scale, which shows a good fit to the data, as reflected in the fit indices, the high factor loudings, and the significant relations among dimensions. This provides evidence for the scale’s latent structure.

SEM Model

Figure 3: Structural equation model

Second, we estimate a structural equation model, regressing market justice on the latent meritocracy factors. This is where the multidimensional approach shows its value. By modeling each dimension as a latent factor, the model separates true variance from measurement error and simultaneously estimates the four structural paths to market justice, recovering associations that a summative index would obscure. Market justice itself is modeled as a latent factor from three items on fair income-based access to education, health, and pensions.

Now to the results.

Perceiving society as meritocratic is associated with greater support for market justice. This is consistent with previous work and an important replication.

We haven’t found an effect of preferences for meritocracy, perhaps because this factor varies little.

Perceiving privilege relates to lower support. A possible interpretation is that seeing society as driven by privilege rather than merit may heighten awareness of inequality and weaken its justification.

Finally, the most striking result, in our view, is that accepting privilege is associated with higher support for market justice, the largest effect in the model. Those who see privilege as a legitimate basis for getting ahead are also the most willing to accept that income should buy better welfare. It is a novel finding, and one we look forward to discussing.

Discussion and conclusion

Discussion and conclusion

• Findings: perceiving merit and endorsing privilege raise MJP; perceiving privilege lowers it
• Part of a broader agenda on the policy feedback of commodification (Busemeyer & Iversen, 2020; Koos & Sachweh, 2019; Lindh, 2015); two prior longitudinal studies of ours, but not multidimensional (Castillo et al., 2026, 2025)
• Contribution: multidimensional measurement plus SEM disentangles distinct paths, net of measurement error (Meuleman et al., 2020)
• Limits: cross-sectional, one country; next: social structure (class, stratification, context), conjoint experiments, cross-country

To conclude, a few points.

First, we have shown that it is not enough to talk about meritocracy in general. Its dimensions matter and do not work the same way: perceiving merit and accepting privilege raise support for market-based welfare, while perceiving privilege lowers it.

Second, this work seeks to contribute to the welfare attitudes literature, particularly to the literature on the policy feedback effects of commodification, by positioning meritocratic beliefs as a key driver of preferences for market-based welfare. Our team has been pushing this link across a couple of publications, and we now extend it by measuring meritocracy in multiple dimensions.

Third, we also want to contribute on the methodological side. Modeling these beliefs as latent factors in an SEM separates measurement error from structure and recovers distinct paths that a summative index would obscure, an approach that is transferable to other beliefs and domains.

Finally, this work is cross-sectional and single-country. From here, our aim is more sociological: to embed these beliefs in social structure and examine how class, stratification, and context shape these relationships. In parallel, we are building conjoint experiments and cross-country comparisons. Thank you.

Website: https://jus-mer.com/

Thanks you for your attention!

Comments most welcome 🫡

References

Brown, T. A. (2015). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research (Second edition). New York London: The Guilford Press.

Busemeyer, M. (2015). Skills and inequality: Partisan politics and the political economy of education reforms in western welfare states. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107477650

Busemeyer, M., & Iversen, T. (2020). The Welfare State with Private Alternatives: The Transformation of Popular Support for Social Insurance. The Journal of Politics, 82(2), 671–686. https://doi.org/10.1086/706980

Campbell, J. L. (2020). Institutional Change and Globalization. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv131bw68

Castillo, J. C., Canales-Sellés, R., Laffert, A., & Urzúa, T. (2026). Justification trajectories for pension inequality in Chile (2016–2023): The role of social class and beliefs in meritocracy. Frontiers in Sociology, 11, 1771856. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2026.1771856

Castillo, J. C., Iturra, J., Maldonado, L., Atria, J., & Meneses, F. (2023). A Multidimensional Approach for Measuring Meritocratic Beliefs: Advantages, Limitations and Alternatives to the ISSP Social Inequality Survey. International Journal of Sociology, 53(6), 448–472. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2023.2274712

Castillo, J. C., Laffert, A., Carrasco, K., & Iturra-Sanhueza, J. (2025). Perceptions of inequality and meritocracy: Their interplay in shaping preferences for market justice in Chile (2016–2023). Frontiers in Sociology, 10, 1634219. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1634219

Fernandez, J. J., & Jaime-Castillo, A. M. (2013). Positive or Negative Policy Feedbacks? Explaining Popular Attitudes Towards Pragmatic Pension Policy Reforms. European Sociological Review, 29(4), 803–815. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcs059

Ferre, J. C. (2023). Welfare regimes in twenty-first-century Latin America. Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 39(2), 101–127. https://doi.org/10.1017/ics.2023.16

Gingrich, J. R. (2011). Making Markets in the Welfare State: The Politics of Varying Market Reforms (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791529

Kline, R. B. (2023). Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling. Guilford Publications.

Koos, S., & Sachweh, P. (2019). The moral economies of market societies: Popular attitudes towards market competition, redistribution and reciprocity in comparative perspective. Socio-Economic Review, 17(4), 793–821. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwx045

Lindh, A. (2015). Public Opinion against Markets? Attitudes towards Market Distribution of Social Services – A Comparison of 17 Countries. Social Policy & Administration, 49(7), 887–910. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12105

Mau, S. (2015). Inequality, Marketization and the Majority Class: Why Did the European Middle Classes Accept Neo-Liberalism? London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Meuleman, B., Roosma, F., & Abts, K. (2020). Welfare deservingness opinions from heuristic to measurable concept: The CARIN deservingness principles scale. Social Science Research, 85, 102352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.102352

Streeck, W. (2016). How will capitalism end? Essays on a failing system. London New York, NY: Verso.

Supplementary Material

Measures

Dependent variable — Market justice preferences

• Justifying income-based access to three core services: healthcare, pensions, and education → e.g. “Is it fair that people with higher incomes access better healthcare than those with lower incomes?”
• 5-point Likert (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)
• Three items → one latent factor

Meritocratic beliefs (4 latent dimensions)

• Same items as the original scale (Castillo et al., 2023)
• 4-point Likert items (1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree)

Controls

• Sex (man / woman); age; education (years); income quintile; political identification (left / center / right / none)

Analytical strategy

• First, we estimate a Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the multidimensional meritocracy scale (Brown, 2015)

• Second, we estimate a Structural Equation Model → latent market justice regressed on latent meritocracy factors

\[ \text{MJP}_{i} = \alpha + \beta_1 \eta^{PM}_{i} + \beta_2 \eta^{PNM}_{i} + \beta_3 \eta^{PrM}_{i} + \beta_4 \eta^{PrNM}_{i} + \gamma'X_i + \varepsilon_i \]

• Estimation: WLSMV
  → appropriate for ordinal (Likert-type) data (Kline, 2023)

• Fit cutoffs: CFI, TLI ≥ .95; RMSEA ≤ .06 (Brown, 2015)

Methodologically, we prəˈsēd in two steps. First, we estimate a confirmatory factor analysis of the multidimensional scale, which showed a good fit to the data. This adds evidence in line with the leitent structure of the scale.

Second, we estimate a structural equation model in which pension market justice is regressed on the leitent meritocracy factors. This allauwas to model the covariance among the items, recover the underlying dimensions of meritocratic beliefs, and estimate how each of them relates to support for market justice. Formally, the outcome is modeled as a function of the scale’s four leitent dimensions, along with the same controls as in the main paper.

Descriptive

Figure 4: Distribution of responses on the scale of perceptions and preferences regarding meritocracy

Bivariate

Figure 5: Correlation matrix between market justice and meritocracy scale

Structural model: four paths, four stories

Predictor (latent)	β (std)	p
Meritocratic perceptions	+.08	<.001
Non-meritocratic perceptions	−.20	<.001
Meritocratic preferences	+.02	.58 (n.s.)
Non-meritocratic preferences	+.37	<.001

• Controls: female −.13; Right +.33, Center +.13, no party ID +.17
• Income quintiles all n.s. → driven by beliefs, not income position

SEM Model: Pensions

Figure 6: SEM Model for market justice preferences in pensions

SEM Model: Education

Figure 7: SEM Model for market justice preferences in education

SEM Model: Healthcare

Figure 8: SEM Model for market justice preferences in healthcare