In this Vox piece, Sean Illing talks with Cornell University professor and author Suzanne Mettler about Mettler's new book The Government-Citizen Disconnect. Race obviously plays a role. Says Mettler,
Race is significant, and many other scholars have discovered this as well. Across the board, whites had more unfavorable views of welfare than people of color, in large part because they considered welfare something that people of color primarily benefit from.
Income also plays a role, according to Mettler.
When it comes to the receipt of benefits, you might think that recipients would be in the like and need government camp. However, it's not that simple, Mettler explains that it's the type of benefits received that matters.
The people who participate the most in politics, usually people with more education and more resources, rely on plenty of social benefits from government, but these benefits are often hidden in the tax code or are disguised in other ways. So they don't think of government as having done much for them personally.
But the people who are most aware that government has helped them tend to be people who've used more visible policies like food stamps or subsidized housing or Medicaid. The reasons for this are fairly straightforward.
Mettler also says,
When people are asked broad questions about how big government should be, or if they approve of larger taxes, they reflexively sound pretty conservative. But when they’re asked more concrete questions about funding for Social Security or unemployment insurance, they sound pretty liberal.
