Tax Burden, Tax Types, and Public Opinion toward Social Welfare Program

• In Event: Public Opinion on Tax and Redistribution

Abstract

Previous research indicates that American people have a generally poor understanding of social welfare programs. It is possible that providing information about welfare programs and their tax sources may shape the mass public’s welfare preferences, but we argue that such effects are likely to diverge according to the content of taxes and their correspondence with existing ideological beliefs as well as income levels. Through conducting original survey experiments, we explore how people with separate political ideologies and income levels respond to welfare programs’ tax sources and redistributive burdens. We anticipate that, in general, citizens dislike welfare policies funded by highly visible taxes such as federal individual income tax. Information about welfare programs funded by state taxes (as opposed to federal taxes) has a larger positive impact on conservatives’ support than on liberals’ support. We also find that information about progressive taxes that provide funding for welfare programs has a bigger negative impact on high-income citizens, while details about regressive taxes that provide financial resources for welfare programs have a larger negative impact on low-income individuals, especially when the corresponding social welfare benefits are regressive too.

Authors

• Hang Qi, University of Missouri - Columbia, MO

• Elizabeth I. Dorssom, Lincoln University