Do Americans Want the Government to Alleviate Income Inequality through Social Welfare? the Influence of Political Identity and Government Trust

Background and Purpose: Income inequality in America has widened since the 1970s (Jarosz & Mather, 2018). One alternative to reduce income inequality is to expand government spending on social welfare yet there is little discussion about this alternative. This may reflect the lack of consensus about the role of government in reducing income inequality or expanding social welfare. While these attitudes are influenced by political ideology, trust in government may moderate ideology. This presentation examines the impact of political ideology and the moderating effect of trust in government on the role of government in reducing income inequality and expanding social welfare expenditure. We test four hypotheses: (1) Perceptions of government responsibility for reducing income inequality and expanding social welfare are correlated; (2) The more liberal one’s political ideology, the more likely one supports government’s role to reduce income inequality; (3) The more liberal one’s political ideology, the more likely one believes that government should expand social welfare expenditure and; (4) Trust in the government moderates the relationship between political ideology and perception of government responsibility.

Methods: Data come from the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS), a probability sample of adults ages18 years and older. This study included 819 participants who were randomly selected to participate in Form X and the International Social Survey Programme. The dependent variables are dichotomous and based on responses to: (1) “the government should be responsible for reducing income inequality” and (2) “believes that the government should expand welfare.” The independent variable is a respondent’s political ideology rated on a 7-point scale (extremely conservative to extremely liberal). The moderator is trusts in government scored on a 5-point scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree). Covariates include age, sex, race, religion, marital status, education level, social class, and interest in politics. Data were analyzed through a seemingly unrelated bivariate probit regression model, which is appropriate when two binary dependent variables may have correlated error terms.

Results: The significant Wald test indicates that running two probit models simultaneously is appropriate rather than running the models separately. The positive rho indicates that perceptions of government responsibility for reducing income inequality and for expanding welfare are positively correlated (confirming Hypothesis 1). The influence of political ideology and trust in government differed for each dependent variable. A more liberal political ideology was associated with a greater probability of perceiving income inequality as the government’s responsibility (confirming Hypothesis 2), but the effect of political ideology was weakened when trust in government was high (confirming Hypothesis 4). A more liberal political ideology was associated with a greater probability of perceiving expanding social welfare as the government’s responsibility (confirming Hypothesis 3), but trust in government had no significant effect (rejecting Hypothesis 4).

Conclusions and Implications: These findings imply that the trust in government may facilitate discussion about and bring consensus on reducing income inequality through expanding government spending on social welfare beyond political ideology. The implications for social work advocacy and messaging are important considerations in promoting efforts to reduce income inequality.