Racial Sentiments and Over-responsiveness to the Political Preferences of the Affluent in State Medicaid Expenditures, 1988-2012

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 18. Race, Ethnicity and Politics

Abstract

This study assesses the proposition that policy makers are able to produce policy outcomes biased toward the political preferences of their affluent constituents because their inaffluent constituents offer electoral support on the basis of racial sentiments. This study combines MRP estimates of different types of public sentiments for different income groups across states and time with a unique dataset including detailed information on state Medicaid expenditures from 1988-2012. A fixed-effects modeling approach is employed to determine whether the liberal-conservative ideology, health policy preferences, and racial sentiments of different income groups influence Medicaid policy outcomes. Consistent with earlier research, I find that policy responds to the purely political preferences of the affluent but not the inaffluent. Yet policy simultaneously reflects the racial sentiments of the inaffluent. The findings suggest policy makers employ racialized segmented representation in order to limit electoral sanctions that should follow from their overrepresentation of the affluent.

Author

• Daniel Lanford, Georgia State Unviersity and Emory University