Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Political Science

Committee Chair

Matthew Jacobsmeier

Committee Member

Jeffrey Worsham

Committee Member

William Franko

Committee Member

Erin Cassese

Abstract

In this dissertation I analyze the development of contemporary US welfare policy with special consideration given to the importance of race and gender. In the introductory chapter I outline how the development of the American welfare state has continuously neglected the needs of women and minorities as well as how classist, racist, and sexist appeals have been prevalent throughout US history in relation to welfare policies. The remaining chapters analyze how contemporary welfare policies including the 1996 welfare reforms and state drug-testing for welfare laws carry on these American legacies. In Chapter 1 I examine how the classist, sexist, and racist messages surrounding the 1996 welfare reform affected the welfare preferences of White and Black respondents from 1994 to 1996 using panel data and find some evidence suggesting that Black women became more supportive of the child cap reform from 1994 to 1996. In Chapter 2 I track state adoptions and proposals of drug-testing laws across American states from 2009 to 2018 to examine how racial variables affected the diffusion of drug-testing policies and find that state-levels of racial resentment significantly affect the likelihood of both adoptions and proposals. Finally, I use a novel experimental survey design to examine the effect of marginal and non-marginal implicit racial cues on Black preferences on drug-testing for welfare as well as novel framing techniques to determine whether conservative support for drug-testing for welfare policies is due to race-neutral conservative principles or racial prejudice and find some evidence suggesting that conservatives were not primarily motivated by racial resentment.

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