Linked Fate in the Context of Health and Healthcare

• In Event: Poster Session: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Abstract

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been one of the most prominent contentious policies over the last decade. Public opinion, which has captured attitudes towards healthcare reform, demonstrates an almost even split in favorable and unfavorable views. However, when these data are stratified by race/ethnicity, Blacks and Latinos hold more favorable views towards healthcare reform than Whites. To better understand the public opinion in healthcare as it relates to race, I apply the concept of linked fate, a theory of group identity. The aim of this paper is to test how the links between the health of a community, meaning the uninsured and ill, impact evaluations of healthcare. Several studies have demonstrated the role of linked fate on policy attitudes and evaluations. In general, higher measures of linked fate are correlated with higher approval of the expansion of social policies. This piece of the study tests this by looking at the role of linked fate across Latinos, Blacks, and Whites on their approval of expansion of healthcare. By using the Center for Social Policy Survey (n=3400), I find that Blacks and Latinos are more sensitive to the concept of linked fate as it relates to the health of their community than Whites. Furthermore, I find that individuals who have been uninsured in the past year and have poor self-rated health are more likely to activate linked fate than individuals who have health insurance and have good self-rated health. This research helps advance the concept of linked fate as it is contextualized in the context of healthcare and sheds light on how individuals develop their opinions towards healthcare.

Author

• Maria Livaudais, California State University East Bay