Economic Self-Interest and Americans’ Redistributive, Class, and Racial Attitudes: The Case of Economic Insecurity

The Relationship Between Racial Attitudes and Perceived Economic Threat Among Whites: A Three Study Analysis

“…Both the material and symbolic threat theoretical orientations provide plausible reasons for perceptions of economic threat, whether stemming from perceived deprivation or racial grievance, to be associated with symbolic and affective racial attitudes. Material threat stresses competitive self-interest motives (Melcher, 2020, 2021) whereas symbolic threat stresses racialized perceptions of economic justice (Sides et al, 2019). Admittedly, the present studies cannot distinguish between these two mechanisms.…”

“…Measuring individuals’ self-interest, particularly in relation to financial well-being, has proven to be the subject of some scholarly debate as well. Melcher (2020) argues that “the variables often used to measure economic self-interest do not follow conceptually from the theoretical claims of the political economic frame,” and that “variables that are often interpreted as sociotropic can plausibly be interpreted as measuring individual-level economic self-interest.” He advocates instead for measures that capture affective economic insecurity (Melcher, 2021) and those that capture perceived self-interest rather than those that assume that “respondents should feel economic anxiety” (Melcher, 2020). With this in mind, it is important to use measures that capture the true perceived fear of economic despair or that capture the sense that one may personally face negative consequences if power dynamics between racial groups shift.…”

“…Perhaps the most common basis for this hypothesis is the segmented labor market theory which asserts that racial animosity arises from labor market competition, particularly when racial groups have differing wage demands (Bonacich, 1972). As Melcher (2021) writes “in short, racial antagonism is primarily an attempt, on the part of advantaged racial groups, to protect their economic well-being by removing disadvantaged racial groups from the labor pool.” This hypothesis has found some empirical support (see Dancygier & Donnelly, 2012; Malhotra et al, 2013). Therefore, I present the following hypothesis.H 1 : Whites who experience greater economic anxiety, as measured by whether or not they believe that they are going to lose income in the coming year, will be more likely to hold more negative racial attitudes, as measured by the color-blind racial attitudes scale (CoBRAS) and the racial resentment scale.…”

Risk and Health Policy Preferences: Evidence from the UK COVID-19 Crisis

“…The right-hand panel shows estimates from a series of linear regression models, in which we regress BES variables that measure respondents' attitudes to and experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the occupational proximity-risk of respondents. In these regressions, we standardise all outcomes, as well as the occupational proximity-risk variable, to ones (Melcher 2021), and this might be because individuals are not aware of their objective unemployment risks (such as occupational unemployment rates). This is unlikely to be a limitation for the use of OccP roximityRisk as this measure captures an occupation's proximity to others, a fact known to any individual (unlike, for example, occupational unemployment rates).…”

Place and Policy Preferences – Spatial Divides in Attitudes towards Social Policies in Germany

“…One of the main arguments in the political economy literature is that considerations of material self-interest drive preferences for redistribution(Franko et al, 2013;Meltzer & Richard, 1981;Owens & Pedulla, 2014;Rehm, 2009;Rueda, 2018). 1 1 However, the empirical evidence on the impact of self-interest considerations on redistribution and social policy preferences is ambiguous (for short discussions of the respective findings, seeMargalit, 2013;Melcher, 2021).…”