ABSTRACT
Previous research shows that adults overestimate benefit overuse and that such misperceptions are associated with lower perceived deservingness, a crucial dimension through which welfare attitudes relate to broader welfare state legitimacy. Yet, the origins and malleability of benefit overuse beliefs remain poorly understood. This study addresses this gap by using original survey data from 1527 Swiss secondary school students (ages 13–18) and a follow-up survey experiment pilot (N = 130). We first demonstrate that adolescents severely overestimate unemployment benefit overuse: more than 60% believe that overuse is at least ten times higher than the most recent government-issued rate of approximately 1% in Switzerland. Moreover, over one-third are misinformed, holding incorrect beliefs with confidence. Notably, male and right-leaning students are more likely to be misinformed than female and centre/left-leaning students, but for different reasons: male students tend to be confident whether right or wrong, while right-leaning students are more confident mainly when wrong, suggesting early traces of motivated reasoning. Crucially, it is the misinformed, not the uninformed, who perceive the unemployed as less deserving. However, the results of the experimental pilot study show that false beliefs are malleable. Providing students with proportional information about benefit overuse substantially improves accuracy and reduces the share of misinformed participants. Moreover, changes in overuse beliefs partly show in the higher perceived deservingness of the unemployed. Overall, the findings demonstrate that welfare misconceptions are widespread but not fixed among adolescents, suggesting that the impressionable years are an important window for investigating the informational foundations of welfare attitudes.