Congratulations on being one of the seven people selected to answer this survey! Since the sample size is so small, every response is very important.
You can skip this explanation and go straight to the questions if you like.
This survey is related to a method of encouraging people, primarily people who already earn a lot of money, to work less. The details of the system, and the psychological reasons it would lead to people working less, are not important. If people used this method, it would lead to a reduction in unemployment and economic inequality worldwide, but it would also lead to a reduction in willingness to give money to poor people who don't have a job, and to less welfare spending in general.
This survey is prompted by a news story similar to many other news stories:
Some people (such as one of my sisters) have no interest in trying to understand people who do bad things. They say, just carry out the sentence, or update the laws if the sentence isn't appropriate, and move on. Sometimes, trying to understand the motivations for an action aren't worth it. Why would a mother allow her child to be harmed? Why would a warthog
attack and nearly kill the human that raised him?
In the case of the warthog, there was no attempt to learn the answer; the warthog was just killed in retaliation, and people will be more careful around warthogs as a consequence of this incident. But we can't separate all mothers from their children the way we can avoid approaching warthogs, and so understanding the reason that humans do harmful things is important for finding a way to prevent these actions.
Crimes like this are obviously made worse by poverty. If you're rich, you can afford to hire someone else to change a toddler's diaper, or you don't feel like the time and effort it takes to help a toddler is preventing you from getting something you want, because you already have everything you want.
This is the argument for "if people worked less, there would be more child abuse". Some people would become less poor, as jobs became more plentiful, workers had more bargaining power, and prices of high-end goods like college tuition went down, but there are poor people who would be worse off.
Suppose someone gets $1200 per month now, in housing subsidies, food stamps and cash subsidies, without doing any work; and that if society changed, this person would instead earn $2000 per month but only by working 50 hours per week with another 10 hours spent commuting to work, and due to various reasons (expensive child care options, regulation of the market for childcare, etc.) they now have to pay $700 per month in child care and $300 in extra transportation and food costs from not being able to make and eat all their meals at home. Their excess income has gone down by $200 per month.
This survey examines the theory that even if people were poorer, they would be less likely to abuse their children.
