Stereotypes about welfare recipients led me to question whether welfare was a polarizing issue. I wanted to understand whether trust in the government and party membership could predict an individual’s views on welfare.
My first figure is a graph that shows the relationship between trust in the government and attitudes on welfare over time from 1970-2016. The red line represents individuals with a low trust in the federal government and the blue line represents individuals with high levels of trust in the federal government. From this graph, it can be concluded that people who trust the government tend to have a higher view of welfare, but both high trust and low trust people show a lot of variation in attitude over the years. Starting in 1970, both groups show increasingly positive feelings towards Welfare. Both groups experience a decline and sharp increase from 1990-2000 and in the early 2000s both groups show another increase. Ultimately, Americans who do not trust the government tend to have more negative feelings about welfare, but the attitude’s of both groups tend to vary around the same time and in the same direction. This makes me think that there must be another factor influencing public opinion on welfare. Future research is needed.
My next figure is a linear regression of level of trust in government on welfare attitudes. This model shows that race, ethnicity, income, and gender all have a positive relationship with warmer attitudes toward welfare recipients. Having a higher level of education, and self-identifying as conservative politically are associated with more negative attitudes toward welfare recipients. Controlling for all of these other factors, having greater trust in the federal government is associated with more positive attitudes toward welfare recipients.
The separation of church and state is an important political concept; however, in practice it can be a bit tricky. Realistically, religion influences the decisions of both citizens and government entities either overtly or subtly. Although it is almost unavoidable that this influence is present, the extent of this influence is important to note as it shapes our very country’s fate.
Figure shows the change in average presidential approval among three religions: Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. There is an overall decrease in presidential approval for protestants by 31%, while approval among Jewish people increased by 17% and decreased by 17% among Catholics between 1970 and 2016.
Figure 2 is a coefficient plot showing the results of a logit regression of religion on presidential approval, controlling gender, age, race, ethnicity, level of education, income, and syrvey year. While being Protestant does not have a statistically significant effect on presidential approval (relative to Catholics), Being Jewish is associated with a decreased likelihood of reporting that one approves of the president.