Childcare and Education Spending Attitudes in the United States: Can Targeting and Universalism Explain Differential Support?

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Racial and Ethnic Poltics/Policy

Abstract

A central debate in the welfare state literature remains unresolved. Do targeted programs generate less public support than universal programs? Scholars subscribing to what can be described as targeting and universalism (TU) theory claim that, in the United States, working class and middle class citizens reject income-targeted programs out of self-interest or antipathy toward stigmatized recipients while universal programs garner broad public support. Contrastingly, critics of TU theory argue that Americans are in fact quite generous toward the truly needy and that observed differences in public support for targeted and universal policy stems from other factors. One key reason the debate remains unresolved is that, as of yet, few studies addressing the competing arguments have systematically examined real attitudinal data. I therefore draw on the 2012 survey of the American National Election Study (ANES) and supplementary survey data to directly examine attitudes toward spending on childcare and public education, two programs which are respectively targeted and universal in the American context. I assess a range of hypotheses derived from the debate on targeting and universalism and find that TU theory and its critiques are informative but fall short of a fully satisfactory explanation of differential support. Alternative explanations drawing on each position as well as the racialized politics literature are discussed. The results suggest that, in the U.S., racialized TU theory best explains differential public support for targeted and universal child policy.

Author

• Daniel Lanford, Florida State University