Public
Support for Social Welfare Programs, 1984-1996:
Description and Explanation
Fay
Lomax Cook and Jason Barabas
Abstract
Using data from the National Election Study (NES)
surveys in the seven election years between 1984 and 1996, this
paper examines stability and change in both the levels of support
and the explanations for support of two social welfare programs--Social
Security and Food Stamps. An explanatory model incorporating personal
dispositions of respondents (ideology, party identification, and
retrospective economic assessments), attributions about program
recipients (warmth of feelings toward people on welfare, blacks,
and poor people for Food Stamps, and warmth of feelings towards
the elderly in the case of Social Security), as well as the demographic
characteristics of respondents was used to explain the variance
in support. Despite the often heated rhetoric about the political
legitimacy of social welfare programs over the last decade, a majority
of the public favors maintaining or increasing spending for each
program in every year; the difference is that whereas only a few
(less than 7 percent) ever want to cut spending for Social Security,
a much larger group want to cut spending for Food Stamps (about
a third in most years up to 1992 but rising significantly in 1994
and 1996). The data show overwhelming stability in support for Social
Security over the twelve-year period; less stability in support
for Food Stamps, though the opinion changes in the 1990s are a rational
response to the period's political and economic climate; and a surprising
amount of stability in the underlying structure of support predictors
for both Social Security and Food Stamps.
Fay Lomax Cook, School
of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University Jason Barabas, Department of Political Science,
Northwestern University
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