IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/jopovw/56.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wage Erosion, Economic Assessments, and Social Welfare Opinions

Author

Listed:
  • Jason Barabas

Abstract

Severe wage erosion and rising income inequality during the 1980s and 1990s should have accentuated feelings of self-interest, retrospection, and personal economic hardship among certain socioeconomic subgroups. This study uses data from National Election Study surveys between 1984 and 1994 to show the extent to which spending preferences for Food Stamps and Social Security as well as feelings toward poor people and people on welfare are a function of national, personal, retrospective, and prospective economic assessments. The results indicate that even while controlling for other demographic factors, subjective changes in economic assessments affect social welfare preferences. Negative economic assessments, particularly national and retrospective assessments, increase support for Food Stamps spending and warm feelings toward people on welfare. However, the model does not explain progressively more variance over time, and the coefficients do not increase in magnitude as initially expected due to a likely disconnection between economic unrest and responsibility for those circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason Barabas, 1998. "Wage Erosion, Economic Assessments, and Social Welfare Opinions," JCPR Working Papers 56, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:jopovw:56
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Erikson, Robert S., 1989. "Economic Conditions and the Presidential Vote," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 567-573, June.
    2. Althaus, Scott L., 1998. "Information Effects in Collective Preferences," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(3), pages 545-558, September.
    3. Kuklinski, James H. & West, Darrell M., 1981. "Economic Expectations and Voting Behavior in United States House and Senate Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(2), pages 436-447, June.
    4. Binder, Arnold, 1984. "Restrictions on statistics imposed by method of measurement: Some reality, much mythology," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 467-481.
    5. Sears, David O. & Hensler, Carl P. & Speer, Leslie K., 1979. "Whites' Opposition to “Busing”: Self-interest or Symbolic Politics?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 73(2), pages 369-384, June.
    6. Ostrom, Charles W. & Simon, Dennis M., 1985. "Promise and Performance: A Dynamic Model of Presidential Popularity," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 334-358, June.
    7. Kinder, Donald R. & Kiewiet, D. Roderick, 1981. "Sociotropic Politics: The American Case," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 129-161, April.
    8. Sears, David O. & Lau, Richard R. & Tyler, Tom R. & Allen, Harris M., 1980. "Self-Interest vs. Symbolic Politics in Policy Attitudes and Presidential Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 670-684, September.
    9. Kramer, Gerald H., 1983. "The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- versus Individual-level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 92-111, March.
    10. Peter Kennedy, 2003. "A Guide to Econometrics, 5th Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 5, volume 1, number 026261183x, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Moffitt, 1999. "Explaining Welfare Reform: Public Choice and the Labor Market," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 6(3), pages 289-315, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    2. Jonathon M. Clegg, 2016. "Perception vs Reality: How Does The British Electorate Evaluate Economic Performance of Incumbent Governments In The Post War Period?," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _143, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Matt Guardino & Suzanne Mettler, 2020. "Revealing the “Hidden welfare state†: How policy information influences public attitudes about tax expenditures," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(1).
    4. Roland Iwan Luttens & Marie-Anne Valfort, 2012. "Voting for Redistribution under Desert-Sensitive Altruism," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 881-907, September.
    5. Olof Johansson-Stenman & Peter Martinsson, 2005. "Anyone for higher speed limits? – Self-interested and adaptive political preferences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 319-331, March.
    6. Jeffrey S. DeSimone & Courtney LaFountain, 2007. "Still the Economy, Stupid: Economic Voting in the 2004 Presidential Election," NBER Working Papers 13549, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Matthew J. Lebo & Janet M. Box‐Steffensmeier, 2008. "Dynamic Conditional Correlations in Political Science," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 688-704, July.
    8. Mayne, Quinton & Hakhverdian, Armen, 2016. "Ideological Congruence and Citizen Satisfaction: Evidence from 25 Advanced Democracies," Scholarly Articles 25302405, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    9. Michael Lewis-Beck & Mary Stegmaier, 2013. "The VP-function revisited: a survey of the literature on vote and popularity functions after over 40 years," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 367-385, December.
    10. Alexis Antoniades & Charles W. Calomiris, 2018. "Mortgage Market Credit Conditions and U.S. Presidential Elections," NBER Working Papers 24459, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Andrew J. Healy & Mikael Persson & Erik Snowberg, 2016. "Digging into the Pocketbook: Evidence on Economic Voting from Income Registry Data Matched to a Voter Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 6171, CESifo.
    12. Leo Kahane, 2009. "It’s the economy, and then some: modeling the presidential vote with state panel data," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 343-356, June.
    13. Scott Sigmund Gartner & Gary M. Segura & Michael Wilkening, 1997. "All Politics Are Local," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 41(5), pages 669-694, October.
    14. Nicholas Bornstein & Philippe Thalmann, 2008. "“I Pay Enough Taxes Already!” Applying Economic Voting Models to Environmental Referendums," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1336-1355, December.
    15. Paulo Jorge Reis Mourao, 2012. "The Weber-Fechner Law and Public Expenditures Impact to the Win-Margins at Parliamentary Elections," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2012(3), pages 291-308.
    16. Antoniades, Alexis & Calomiris, Charles W., 2020. "Mortgage market credit conditions and U.S. Presidential elections," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    17. Robert Grafstein, 2009. "The Puzzle of Weak Pocketbook Voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 21(4), pages 451-482, October.
    18. Rui Wang & James S. Fishkin & Robert C. Luskin, 2020. "Does Deliberation Increase Public‐Spiritedness?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2163-2182, October.
    19. Jinsuk Yang & Qing Hao & Mahmut Yaşar, 2023. "Institutional investors and cross‐border mergers and acquisitions: The 2000–2018 period," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 553-583, September.
    20. Styan, Jacob & Boerngen, Maria A. & Barrowclough, Michael J., 2021. "Factors Influencing Increased Usage of Cash Rent Leases in Illinois," Journal of the ASFMRA, American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, vol. 2021.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:jopovw:56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/jcuchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.