Public Opinion

I think I've blogged before about my preference for a term like "economic recovery" rather than the more technocratic-sounding "economic stimulus." A new message memo from pollsters Hart and Associations suggests recovery is also more resonant with the public than stimulus:

The survey results indicate that voters do not respond well to “stimulus” as an economic priority, while “economic recovery” does resonate.

The Guardian (UK) has an interesting new poll out that "contradicts the widespread assumption that environmental issues are seen by voters as a luxury to be put aside in tough economic times." Although the overall framing of poll, which pits the "economy" against "the environment", is problematic, the findings are still worth a look, particularly those on the greater priority working-class voters in the UK are giving to climate change:

....

Environmentalists are constantly accused of being middle-class lifestyle faddists, who don't understand the day-to-day financial pressures faced by "ordinary" working people. But the number of people who thought that environment should be the government's priority rather than the economy was substantially higher (56%) among the lower income, less well-educated DE¹ demographic [Unskilled manual and unemployed] than among the better-off ABs [Managerial and professional] (47%). Lower-income social groups also have a much lighter environmental footprint overall: only 42% of DEs [ took a foreign holiday over the last three years, whilst 77% of ABs did. Better-off people also own more cars, as you might expect – only 5% of DEs have three or more cars, whilst 15% of ABs do.

.... The working-class people who they claim "can't afford to be concerned about climate change" actually care more about the future of the planet than the rich – and are doing a lot less damage to boot. So next time you hear someone defending motorway expansion or cheap flights on behalf of the British poor, ask yourself the question: whose side are they really on?

For just over three decades, Gallup has been asking Americans if they feel better or worse off financially than a year ago. This month's number—55 percent saying they're worse off—is both a record high and the first time a majority said they're worse off.

Earlier this week, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, ACORN, the Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights kicked off the political arm of a campaign to expand the middle class by nearly 20 million people over the next decade. Well, they don't actually it that, but that's the basic idea.

The campaign's new website notes that the campaign "will focus on the issues facing the poor and middle class in America, building an effective constituency to advocate for specific policy changes." The part about focusing on issues facing the middle class is a notable addition and something that was lacking from CAP's earlier report on poverty.

It's a good sign that John Edwards is chairing the campaign. Edwards could bring the kind of partisan and populist voice to this work that has been lacking on the national level. As Larry Bartels' new book suggests, advancing the cause of economic justice in the next decade will require a Democrat in the White House and more partisanship rather than less.

Edwards should help ensure that the campaign doesn't become a kind of mushy attempt to find "common ground" between Republicans and Democrats on economic justice. The reality is that there really isn't any common ground on economic justice right now or in the near future at the national level given the conservative extremism of the national Republican party and their allies. (I say this as a matter of fact rather than advocacy—there are thoughtful efforts by progressive R's to change this, but it's a decades-long project, not a short-term one). The biggest challenge for the CAP campaign isn't finding common ground between Republicans and Democrats, it's making sure that conservative Democrats don't obstruct efforts to expand the middle class (which is one of the reasons, by the way, that this campaign needs to be framed as a campaign to expand the middle class).

While I'm a fan of the policy ideas put forward by the campaign, I'm less enthusiastic about much of the communcations aspect of the campaign. The name of the campaign, "Half in Ten," while easy to remember, sounds more like a technocratic goal than a statement that combines vision and values. This can be demonstrated by comparing it with ONE: The Campaign to Make [Global] Poverty History and Green for All's goal to "build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

ONE is both a values statement (we're in this together, "united as ONE") and a true vision statement ("make poverty history"). Similarly, Green for All's goal combines vision and values—a strong and inclusive economy—in a slogan that clearly positions poverty as an economic issue. By contrast, "Half in Ten" has no obvious values content and will sound to some like "give us half a loaf in 10 years." This may be fine as a compromise governmental goal adopted by political leaders, but may be less effective as an advocacy slogan. I wish the wealthy backers of estate tax repeal had rallied under the banner of reducing the estate tax by 50 percent in 10 years, but unfortunately they went for the whole loaf and were much more successful as a result. Of course, a 50 percent reduction in poverty in ten years would be a fantastic accomplishment, but the slogan the campaign, like all good advertising, doesn't need to be so literal.

A related communications issue. Most of the images used on the campaign's website seem likely to reinforce popular stereotypes and misconceptions about people living below the poverty line. The banner of the site rotates a set of photographs that appear to be: a black child, a white mother hugging a child, an elderly white woman in a wheelchair, a black man, and a black woman (the classroom setting suggests that she may be an immigrant). None of the pictures portray people who are clearly at work or in work clothes.

A final point that involves framing in a deeper sense: while it's positive that the campaign "will focus on the issues facing the poor and middle class in America, building an effective constituency to advocate for specific policy changes", they need to go one step further and describe the cross-class constituency they're trying to build as "the working class and middle class." Where I grew up in the tundra of rural Minnesota, there were plenty of people living below the poverty line, but if you called one of them a "poor person" you would probably get either a punch in the face or an insulted glare. The same goes for the hundreds of clients I represented as a legal services attorney in west central Minnesota. Most people with incomes under even the miserly federal poverty line describe themselves as working class or middle class rather than "poor." The descriptions used to describe people—and how they describe themselves—change considerably over time. Negroes, paupers, and, increasingly, homosexual, are examples of terms that have been replaced in general public conversation or are in the process of being replaced. Poor people is another term in need of such evolution.

Some interesting stuff in this new Kaiser Family Foundation poll:

• During the last five years, one of out every five Americans reports having been contacted by a collection agency because of medical bills. Some 17 percent have used up all or most of their savings and 12 percent have been unable to pay for basic necessities because of medical bills.
• Almost one in five (18 percent) decided to stay in one job, rather than take another, mainly because the job they held at the time offered better health care benefits.
• Asked to name the two issues they would most like to hear presidential candidates talk about, 22 percent named health care as the first issue (it was third after economic issues and Iraq); and 18 percent named it as their second issue. Poverty didn't manage even half a percent as a first or second issue, but was named as a second issue by 1 percent of Democratic registered voters. The budget deficit/national debt was named as a first issue by two percent, and a second issue by one percent.
• More Americans want to hear candidates talk about reducing the costs of health care and health insurance (40 percent) than about expanding health insurance coverage for the uninsured (31 percent), with an even wider gap (46-25) among independent voters.

And my favorite finding: Five percent decided to get married "mainly to have access to their spouse's health care benefits", and another five percent decided to get married so their spouse could have access to their health care benefits.¹ Which got me thinking, this might be a good follow-up to the "married people earn more money" billboards that have been popping up in urban neighborhoods (including mine):

According to this recent Gallup poll, Americans are now more "redistributionist" than they were at the end of the Great Depression:

Asked if the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair or if they need to be distributed more evenly, about two-thirds of Americans agree with the latter response. This is up slightly from last year and, by two points, is the highest "more evenly distributed" response to this question that Gallup has found over the eight times it has been asked since 1984.

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Slightly over half of Americans believe the government should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich.

The percentage holding this view, similar to that found in Gallup polling last year, is up from 1998 and in particular is higher than was found in a Roper poll conducted for Fortune Magazine back in 1939. Although the methods and sampling of polling done in the 1930s may differ significantly from those of today, the rough comparison suggests that Americans appear to have become even more "redistributionist" in their views than they were at the tail end of the Depression.

....

Also see Gallup's video on these and related findings.

The new Pew Research report on the middle class is full of fascinating survey and statistical information. Some things from the survey that caught my eye on a quick review:

• The percentage of people saying they are worse off now than they were five years ago is now at 31 percent, the highest level recorded in polling by Pew and Gallup over the last 44 years. Similarly, the share saying that are better off now than five years ago is at a low point, 41 percent.
• The percentage of people saying who agree with the statement "it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can't take care of themselves" is now back down to its lowest level (57 percent) since 1994. That's a 12 percentage point drop over the last year.
• More than two-thirds (68 percent) of people in the middle class agree with the statement: "Today it's really true that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer."
• Slightly more Americans think the rich are rich because they "know the right people or were born into it" (46 percent) than because of "hard work, ambition, or education" (42 percent). Almost half (47 percent) of those describing themselves as middle class, and slightly more than half (53 percent) of those describing themselves as lower class say that the rich are rich because they know the right people or were born into it.

They also do a neat statistical portrait of the middle (income) class that looks at changes in the size of the middle class between 1970 and now. The middle class—defined by Pew as households with incomes between 75% of 150% of median, about $45K to $89K for a family of three—is smaller now (35 percent of all adults) than it was in 1970 (40 percent). In a trend that doesn't bode well for the future, the biggest declines in the middle class (and increases in the lower class) are among 18-29 year olds and 30-44 year olds.

In an earlier post, I noted some recent polling on where most Americans would draw the poverty line, and the amount of income needed to be "middle class." In that same vein, in a recent Monkey Cage post, political scientist John Sides discusses a survey he recently conducted that asks the following question:

How much income do you think the average American household earns in a year? If you do not know, you can just give your best guess.

According to Sides, "the median answer was $40,000. The actual median [income] is $48,000. On average, people’s estimates are fairly accurate."

The New America Foundation has an interesting paper out on public opinion and the potential for a new social contract. It's quite comprehensive, has somewhat encouraging news about my generation's politics (we're more likely to want government to solve problems, but less likely to think we have special obligations as citizens) and is definitely worth a glance.

But its thinking on inequality is sloppy. It asserts that even though the public says it doesn't like inequality, they don't really care.

A belief that it is okay to be rich or at least that economic inequality is part of the normal order in America. Three-quarters of survey respondents believe that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and we have felt this way for years. Still, polls show very little support for government as a redistributor of income. While 45 percent say that they have trouble making ends meet, 60 percent say they are satisfied with their financial situation. Ironically, opposition to the inheritance tax comes largely from those who should expect to inherit nothing.

But is the public's lack of support for redistribution a good measure? For one, public confidence in public officials and government competence is at about historic lows. This hasn't always been the case- during the 1960s, for instance, almost three-fourths of the public trusted policymakers to do the right thing. But the last 25-30 years of conservative dominance both reflected and reinforced a deep suspicion of government. History shows it can be turned around, and maybe then there'd be more support for redistributing income.

And most Americans probably understand inequality differently than is assumed here. Some research shows that income inequality is seen as the result of declining job quality and educational opportunities. In accordance with this view, the public is more likely to support programs that are seen as redistributing opportunity instead of income. The public overwhelmingly supports strong government involvement in education, for instance.

Perhaps what the author really believes is that individualism is and will be the dominant American paradigm for some time to come. In the end, the paper recommends a contract that is "about what government can do to help Americans as individuals." But if Americans do care about inequality, and are disturbed by growing disparities between the rich and everyone else, then they may harbor communal values that progressives could activate. A social contract that begins by urging the public to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" should have better luck, particularly if my generation starting thinking a little more coherantly about its politics.

While I'm on the topic of polls on the economy, I noticed something interesting in the Pew poll on the economy that was released yesterday. The poll finds big increases in the share of Republican and Independents who view "strengthening the economy" as a top priority. Three out of four Americans now see the economy as a top priority and the there's no difference between R's, D's and Independents (there used to be a 12-point R-D gap). At the same time, however, the share of Americans who view "dealing with the problems of the poor and needy" as a top priority has declined, going from a peak of 59 percent in 2005 to 51 percent this year. Between this year and last, the share of Republicans naming poverty as a top priority fell from 48 to 34 percent; among Dems, it fell from 67 to 61 percent.

If most people view poverty as an economic issue, one would expect the numbers on the economy and poverty to move in tandem. The fact that they don't suggests that poverty is viewed more in terms of charity and sympathy than economics, as something it's nice to do something about when times are good, but less of a priority in a downtown.

Because the current economic slowdown could prove to be long lasting, it will be important to develop frames and ways of talking about economic disadvantage that don't play into this framing and weaken public support for anti-poverty efforts.

The most recent LA Times/Bloomberg poll asks:

Which do you think is more effective in stimulating the nation's economy: An economic agenda focused on returning money to taxpayers through tax cuts, or an economic agenda focused on spending on such issues as health care and education?

In the poll, conducted between January 18-22, tax cuts beat out health care and education spending by 4 points, 45 percent to 41 percent. What's even more troubling, when the same question was asked in October 2007, health care/education was beating tax cuts by a wide margin, 52 percent to 36 percent. That's quite a turnaround in three months.

What's going on here? My guess is that the focus on tax breaks by both Democrats and Republicans over the last few weeks is responsible. Instead of a clear and compelling alternative, D's and their allies put forward a "tax cuts and ...." message. Making matters worse, instead of putting forward a single big thing after that "and" they filled the blank with programs: unemployment compensation, food stamps, state fiscal relief, etc. The problem was compounded by the common public use of a frame--timely, targeted, and temporary--completely lacking in any resonance with the public. Further muddying the watter, some neo-liberal groups even criticized proposals to boost spending on public infrastructure projects, a message that only plays into arguments for a "privatized" (ie, tax-cut driven) stimulus package.

Flat cash payments to as many low- and middle-income Americans as possible are a sensible part of a stimulus package, but in retrospect, it probably would have been better for Dems and progressives to avoid calling them a "tax rebate." Instead of "tax cuts and ...." there may be a better umbrella term that captures both direct cash payments and other forms of public investment that could have been included in a stimulus package. Going a bit further, casting the package simply in terms of "stimulus" may be limiting because it says little about the need to provide economic relief to individual families, even if that relief doesn't "stimulate" the economy in the narrow economic sense.

In Two Faces of Government Spending, Paul Goren posits that "attitudes toward welfare spending and social spending are distinct phenomena because they are subject to differential degrees of stereotypical thinking in the minds of whites." Using data from the 1992, 1996, and 2000 National Election Studies, Goren finds that "whites’ attitudes toward welfare spending and social spending are structured in two-dimensional terms and that stereotypical beliefs about the work ethic of blacks systematically constrain their welfare attitudes and do not affect attitudes toward other social programs." Here's more from the conclusion section of the paper:

In the United States, a subtle yet unmistakable racial frame of reference permeates public discourse on welfare to a far greater extent than discourse on more popular social programs. When public officials and the news media discuss poverty and the government’s role in combating it, they often utilize racial codes and symbols that can affect how citizens think about the welfare poor (Gilens 1999; Mendelberg 2001). If citizens respond to what they see and hear, then we would expect them to learn to think about welfare in terms of race more so than they would for other types of public aid (Chong 1996, 1993).

My analysis of data from several recent NES surveys supports this perspective on two scores. First, the results of an extensive set of measurement analyses imply that the typical citizen maintains distinct attitudes toward welfare spending and other forms of social spending. Second, stereotypical beliefs about the work ethic of blacks systematically affect welfare opinion and fail to influence non-welfare spending opinion, a conclusion that holds on both statistical and substantive grounds. Insofar as public discourse on poverty implies that government assistance for people on welfare is racially different than assistance for other needy citizens, it appears that citizens have internalized these notions.

.... What is new is the finding that attitudes toward social spending conceived more broadly lay beyond the influence of racial antipathies. Hence, while it is disheartening to know that welfare attitudes are contaminated by racial animosities, it is reassuring to discover that attitudes toward other federal efforts to help the needy lie beyond the baleful influence of racial bigotry.

It would also be interesting to know whether there are similar structured differences in whites' opinions about targeted programs vs. more universal programs, ie, are targeted programs more affected by racially biased attitudes than universal programs. Goren categorizes spending in a way that doesn't necessarily get at this difference:

Welfare spending opinion is gauged using the “welfare programs” and “food stamps” items, which are available in all three studies. Social spending opinion is measured using a series of items that differ somewhat from year to year. The questions ask about spending on “poor people”, “child care”, “Social Security” (available all years), the “homeless” (1992 and 1996), and “government assistance to unemployed” and “aid to the big cities” (1992).

In a fascinating new paper, political scientist Amy Gangl examines whether Americans really believe government is "most fair and just when it runs like a business." Turns out it depends on how you frame the question. Gangl concludes:

... beliefs that government would be more effective if it were run like a business are somewhat malleable. When people are presented with some of the reasons that democratic government works slowly and deliberatively, they are more likely to evaluate political processes positively compared to when they are exposed to information that suggests that democratic processes should work more efficiently like a business.

The poli sci blog The Monkey Cage has a good summary of the paper:

... Gangl set out to determine how deeply ingrained these beliefs really are, and more specifically the extent to which they would prove to be malleable when the issue was presented in a frame highlighting non-efficiency-related considerations. In a survey of 400 adults, Gangl posed the following question to half of the respondents:

Politics in the U.S. often involves debates about important public issues that are carried out in a slow and messy manner. Some people think these are positive characteristics of a democratic government like ours that seeks to represent everyone’s interests. To what extent do you agree?

In contrast to this “pluralistic” framing, Gangl provided a “business” frame for the other half of the sample:

Politics in the U.S. often involves debates about important public issues that are carried out in a slow and messy manner. Some people think that our government should be run more like a successful business, making decisions in a more timely and efficient manner. To what extent do you agree?

The result? The “pluralistic” framing of the question increased respondents’ assessments of the fairness and timeliness of the lawmaking process by 14 and 18 percentage points, respectively. These results, Gangl concludes, “suggest that if political elites spent less time criticizing government and more time setting debates within the context of the institutional structure and demands of the lawmaking process, citizens might not be so critical of the political process.”

NDN released the results last month from an national survey they conducted on the economy and globalization. One of my favorite findings demonstrates the extent to which the public prioritizes public investment over deficit reduction.

I guess the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour is having a rather limited effect on public opinion, which is a good thing.

In yesterday's NYT, Robert Frank offers some advice on framing the estate tax:

Nowhere have the carefully constructed slogans of anti-tax crusaders been more been powerful than in the case of the estate tax, which they like to call the “death tax.” Although voters in the bottom fifth of the income distribution are more likely to be struck by lightning than to leave an estate large enough to set off this tax, two-thirds of them support its repeal. This is bamboozlement of the highest order.

Fortunately, there is clear evidence that reframing the discussion often has a big impact on the way voters think about tax policy. In the spring of 2005, for example, I asked the Survey Research Institute at Cornell University to conduct two telephone surveys to investigate public attitudes about the Bush administration’s proposal to eliminate the estate tax.

In the first survey, respondents were simply asked whether they favored the proposal. Almost 75 percent said they did. In the second, respondents were first told that lost revenue from eliminating the estate tax would necessitate some combination of raising other taxes, borrowing more money from abroad and further cutbacks in government services. This time, almost 80 percent of respondents favored keeping the estate tax.

This isn't huge news—earlier surveys include similar findings—but it's worth remembering.