Despite widespread reforms in recent years, expanded social welfare programs in Global South democracies still fail to reach many of those who need them most. Persistent Citizens draws on original focus group data from Brazil and Argentina to develop a new concept of 'state-centric persistence' to explain these gaps in access. State-centric persistence-unmediated, individualized pursuit of state benefits-is increasingly important in the Global South. The book connects existing research on claim making and administrative burden to argue that self-efficacy, entitlement, and indignation encourage persistence. It analyzes original survey data to show evidence that these attitudes, along with knowledge of social rights, are associated with greater persistence. Persistent Citizens centers the experiences of poor citizens to offer an individual-level theory that contributes to our understanding of what influences social policy access across the globe.