Socio-Economic Status and Socio-Political Orientation: Revisiting Public Attitudes Towards Government Responsibility for Social Welfare in the United States

Background/Purpose: Hasenfeld and Rafferty (1989) pioneered in research on the determinants of public attitudes towards government responsibility for social welfare (welfare attitudes) in the U.S. Since that initial study, however, the number of studies on welfare attitudes has remained minimal, even after the passage of the controversial Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. Thus, the underlying reasons why people support or disapprove of government responsibility for social welfare remain largely unknown. Based on analytical approaches of self-interest and political values, the study explored whether socio-economic status and socio-political orientation factors predict welfare attitudes in the U.S.

Methods: Data and Samples: The study was based on the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS) data which were collected using a cross-sectional design and the computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) method. The study was based on three sub-samples (N = 384, 869, and 875) which were drawn from the three-ballot nationally representative sample (N = 2,867).

Measures: Three variables measured welfare attitudes: (1) Welfare Attitudes Score (WAS) was generated based on eight items from Ballot 1; extracted from Ballot 2 and 3, (2) Living Responsibility Score (LRS) inquired about people’s support for government responsibility to improve the standard of living of all poor Americans; and (3) Medical Responsibility Score (MRS) assessed people’s support for government responsibility to ensure people have help in paying for doctors and hospital bills. Independent variables included: (1) socio-economic status, which was operationalized as social class, education level, and income level; and (2) socio-political orientation, which was operationalized as people’s preference of political values ranging from liberal to conservative and preference of political parties.

Analyses: Ordered logistic regression was used to explore WAS given its ordinal level of measurement; results were presented as odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals, based on the proportional odds assumption. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the other two interval outcome variables: LRS and MRS; results were presented as regression coefficients with 95% confidence intervals.

Results: Set at two-tailed significance level of .05, the study found that: (1) social class and political views were not significantly associated with welfare attitudes; (2) higher education level predicted lower WAS and MRS while higher income level only predicted lower WAS; and (3) preference of the Democrat party was only significantly associated with higher MRS.

Conclusions and Implications: The study concludes that: (1) higher socio-economic status predicted more negative welfare attitudes in the U.S.; and that (2) socio-political orientation was not associated with welfare attitudes in the U.S. Future research should explore variance across demographic covariates such as age, gender, and race and focus more on longitudinal designs and causal inference. The study also calls for more exploratory and fundamental work in construction and validation of instruments of welfare attitudes. Finally, the study stresses that: (1) a better balance of work ethics and social equality in the design of social welfare policies and programs will benefit welfare recipients; and that (2) equal opportunities and resources for minority groups must be ensured.