Three Essays on the Politics of American Social Programs
Authors: Zhang Baobao 
Published: August 2020

This dissertation presents experimental and quasi-experimental studies that examined the drivers of Americans' attitudes toward social programs. The first and second essays sought to understand how benefiting social programs (e.g., Medicare and governmental scholarships) affected voters’ political attitudes and behavior, a process termed policy feedback. The third essay investigated how expert forecasts about automation's potential impact shaped Americans' beliefs about the future of work and preferences for governmental response.The first essay, "Hands Off My Medicare? Self-Interest and Conditional Policy Feedback," examined how Medicare affects American seniors' political attitudes and behavior. Seniors citizens, compared with other age groups, have consistently expressed the lowest level of support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This observation has led some to hypothesize that seniors oppose the ACA because they perceive that the policy threatens Medicare. Lerman and McCabe’s (2017) regression discontinuity design study produces a surprising finding: receiving Medicare increases support for the ACA. My research tackles the methodological problems of the original study and expands the analysis to include four additional datasets. Contrary to Lerman and McCabe (2017), I find that acquiring Medicare has almost no impact on one’s support for the ACA and limited impact on one’s support for Medicare. My study suggests that evidence for policy feedback through changes in public opinion is weak, and where it exists, respondents’ shift in attitudes reflects their self-interest.The second essay "Scientists’ Political Participation is Not Motivated by Government Benefits" (with Matto Mildenberger, University of California, Santa Barbara) examined the relationship between government funding for science education and political activism by scientists. Some political critics of scientists argue that scientists have become partisan political actors with self-serving financial agendas. However, most scientists strongly reject this view. While social scientists have explored the effects of science politicization on public trust in science, little empirical work directly examines the drivers of scientists' interest in and willingness to engage in political advocacy. Using a natural experiment involving the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF), we causally estimate for the first time whether scientists who have received federal science funding are more likely to engage in both science-related and non-science-related political behaviors. Comparing otherwise similar individuals who received or did not receive NSF support, we find that scientists' preferences for political advocacy are not shaped by receiving government benefits. Government funding did not impact scientists' support of the 2017 March for Science, nor did it shape the likelihood that scientists donated to either Republican or Democratic political groups. Our results offer empirical evidence that scientists' political behaviors are not motivated by self-serving financial agendas. They also highlight the limited capacity of even generous government support programs to increase civic participation by their beneficiaries.The third essay, "No Rage Against the Machines: Threat of Automation Does Not Change Policy Preferences," examined whether the threat of workplace automation changes political preferences. Labor-saving technology has already decreased employment opportunities for middle-skill workers. Experts anticipate that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will cause even more significant disruptions in the labor market over the next two decades. This paper presents three experimental studies that investigate how this profound economic change could affect mass politics. Recent observational studies suggest that workers’ exposure to automation risk predicts their support not only for redistribution but also for right-wing populist policies and candidates. Other observational studies, including my own, find that workers underestimate the impact of automation on their job security. Misdirected blame towards immigrants and workers in foreign countries, rather than concerns about workplace automation, could be driving support for right-wing populism. To correct American workers’ beliefs about the threats to their jobs, I conducted three survey experiments in which I informed workers about the existent and future impact of workplace automation. While these informational treatments convinced workers that automation threatens American jobs, they failed to change respondents' preferences on welfare, immigration, and trade policies. My research finds that raising awareness about workplace automation did not decrease opposition to globalization or increase support for policies that will prepare workers for future technological disruptions.