Racial Resentment Can Motivate Opposition to Welfare

It’s a pretty well-known trope at this point: People who rely on government assistance programs are often the ones who oppose welfare most vociferously. Aside from the infamous “keep your government hands off my Medicare” line, examples abound of poor people who hate government assistance for poor people.

A new study explores a surprising psychological motivation that might be underpinning this opposition to welfare, at least among white people: racial resentment.

Here’s how it works, according to a published in: When whites feel their status in the racial hierarchy is threatened, they become more resentful of minorities. That, in turn, translates to a greater opposition toward welfare, because some people think welfare disproportionately benefits minorities. This dynamic, the authors find, might be why opposition to welfare programs increased after 2008—when the economy was in tatters and the nation had elected a black president.