Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy

Studies in Communication, Media, and Public Opinion

by Martin Gilens

Tackling one of the most volatile issues in contemporary politics, Martin Gilens's work punctures myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion, and the role of the media in both. Why Americans Hate Welfare shows that the public's views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Race, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Poverty

303 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 1999

About the author

Martin Gilens is Professor of Politics at Princeton University. His research examines representation, public opinion, and mass media, especially in relation to inequality and public policy.

Professor Gilens is the author of Affluence Influence Economic Inequality and Political Power in America (2012, Princeton University Press) and Why Americans Hate Welfare Race Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (1999, University of Chicago Press), and has published on political inequality, mass media, race, gender, and welfare politics in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and the Berkeley Journal of Sociology.

He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California Berkeley, and taught at Yale University and UCLA before joining the faculty at Princeton. His research has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Social Science Research Council.

Reviews

[Michael Skora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Framed under a very limited liberal reformist understanding of antiblack racism, but nonetheless offers a great breadth of fascinating empirical evidence on news coverage of American poverty and American beliefs about poor people in the late 20th century.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good book in terms of knowledge, citation, argument, and detail. The author obviously put a lot of work into this and did very thorough research. It is a great book to gain some understanding of why the public and the media perceive the poor and people on welfare as they do.

The one downfall is that certain parts of this book are VERY dry. A necessary evil, to be sure, in order to get the amount of cogent detail the author does for some of his arguments. However, it makes this book quite inaccessible to the lay person if they wanted to read it.

I would really only recommend this book to someone who has had some education in research methods and statistics. Otherwise, a lot of the material will be too dense and hard to follow.

For those who do have the background necessary, this is a very high quality text.

[Grace Barton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gilens proposes interesting ideas on racial biases as the causal mechanism of welfare dissent. I’m not entirely sure if I agree with racial resentment being the primary factor. I do believe it plays a large role but I wonder, rather, if it has something to do with racial homogeneity and out-group biases under distribution of public goods… still racially motivated but maybe more accredited to ethnic fractionalization than Gilens gives credit for. Interesting read would recommend to anyone interested in our welfare state!

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of date, but that's to be expected since I don't think this book ever got an updated edition. But WOW this guy does not know how to write about data in a way that isn't mind-numbing. The exclusive use of second-hand survey data doesn't help either. While it raised interesting questions, it also further solidified my belief that sociology has a ~readable writing~ problem

[Tess Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, changed my perception on the belief of anti poverty policy in the US, would love to read one about recent anti poverty as this was written 24 years ago

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Americans register strong opposition to "welfare" spending (namely, AFDC/TANF), they also register high support for a wide array of anti-poverty programs and the principle of such redistribution broadly. What lies at the root of this paradox? Gilens provides a statistical analysis of a vast trove of survey data to find some answers, and the most salient is the correlation between attitudes toward/opinions of (and stereotyping of) Black people and attitudes toward welfare spending. In identifying the root of this racialization of the image of the welfare recipient (something that runs against the fact that the majority of recipients are white), he conducts a content analysis of news stories in order to show how the face of poverty--and the tone taken toward it--changed across the mid/late twentieth century.

The vast survey data explored in the book offer a welcome corrective to the claim that social spending in the US is so weak because that's what the public wants. As he powerfully concludes, "The findings of this book suggest that, when hard times come, the public will not turn its back on the poor, but will support even more strongly the expansion of government antipoverty efforts. Yet the history of the American welfare state suggests that government will likely fail to respond in a meaningful way to the growing needs of the poor; if so, the blame will lie in a failure of political leadership, not in a lack of concern for the poor among the American people."

[Chris Lund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of up and down... some really interesting parts interspersed with some pretty boring parts. Reads like an academic statistical analysis of data drawn from a huge range of surveys generally gauging various aspects of 'modern' and historical American attitudes towards race and poverty, with occasional political commentary. Written almost 20 years ago, so a bit out of date now, but still has some worthwhile info.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually didn't finish. The premise is really interesting and I was excited to read this, but it's a lot of statistical analysis, graphs, and such; too much for me to push through. I think it's a good book, thoroughly researched and argued, but not what I was expecting to read.

[Elaine Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't get into this one enough to finish it. Very good and important information, but dry. HIDEOUS charts, too. There's a great popular book hiding in all the data, but this isn't it.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too many stats and not enough personality in this book. But good info, nonetheless.

[Crunknor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty convincing case, but written too academically to be very readable.

[Chrissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

great. a bit repetive but good read

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

lots of good data...but not that interesting between the numbers.