Work, Welfare, and Partisan Change

• In Event: Reconsidering the New Deal Legacy and Public Support for Welfare

Abstract

Attitudes regarding work and welfare are strongly correlated with partisanship in contemporary America. (The correlation between party identification and support for government ensuring jobs and living standards increased from .25 in the 1970s to .39 since 2000; the correlation between party identification and support for government aid to minorities increased from .16 to .38.) We examine the evolution of this relationship, focusing specifically on the pivotal cohort of Americans who graduated from high school in 1965. Using survey data from the Political Socialization Panel Study (1965-1997) and semi-structured interviews with some of the panel participants (now in their early seventies), we explore the impact of personal experience on shifting attitudes toward work and welfare. While people from affluent (family and high school) backgrounds are generally more supportive of government assistance, those with higher current incomes are much more likely to think that everyone should get ahead on their own. Republican gains in partisanship over the past half-century, especially among white men, are due in significant part to respect for self-reliance and concerns about welfare abuse. In turn, partisan perspectives color people’s interpretations of their own experiences, reinforcing these attitudes among Republican identifiers and eroding them among Democrats.

Authors

• Larry M. Bartels, Vanderbilt University

• Katherine J Cramer, University of Wisconsin, Madison