Intriguing Social Science Result of the Day

Glenn Loury by way of Henry Farrell:

. Before 1965, public attitudes on the welfare state and on race, as measured by the annually administered General Social Survey, varied year to year independently of one another: you could not predict much about a person’s attitudes on welfare politics by knowing their attitudes about race. After 1965, the attitudes moved in tandem, as welfare came to be seen as a race issue. Indeed, the year-to-year correlation between an index measuring liberalism of racial attitudes and attitudes toward the welfare state over the interval 1950–1965 was .03. These same two series had a correlation of .68 over the period 1966–1996.

I'll have more to say on this later.

Comments

Have you read Martin Gilens on welfare? Book version is Why Americans Hate Welfare; more succinct and relevant APSR version (1996) is entitled "'Race Coding and White Opposition to Welfare." (you have access to academic articles somehow, right? If not let me know and I can send it). It's certainly not the whole story but it's a relevant piece.

Posted by Emily | August 8, 2007 8:20 PM

One factor in the changing attitudes towards welfare with regards to race is that prior to the civil rights movement, black folks were excluded from welfare rolls by various mechanisms. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, this wasn't feasible and civil rights activists made sure that people entitled to inclusion in programs got their benefits. It wasn't just whites-only schools and whites-only bathrooms, there were essentially whites-only relief programs.

Posted by William | August 8, 2007 8:52 PM

Northern liberal states started raising welfare payments substantially and made it easier for unwed mothers to collect AFDC in the early to mid 1960s, and, as we would now expect, the illegitimacy and homicide rates turned up sharply in 1964-1965, with disastrous black riots in 1965-1968. The once great American city of Detroit has never recovered from the 1967 riot, and now the forest is slowly retaking Detroit's State Fair neighborhood between 6 Mile and 8 Mile Roads.

That slice of history, by the way, is essentially why you've all given up on the name "liberal" in favor of "progressive" -- the brand name "liberal" is permanently associated in the public mind with the social catastrophe liberals inflicted on the inner cities in the 1960s.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 8, 2007 9:05 PM

Its not clear to me why this is surprising. Beginning in 1964-1965 you get new War on Poverty programs aimed specifically at urban poverty. In 1966 you have the National Welfare Rights Organization begin implementing a strategy of dramatically expanding local welfare rolls by signing up recent African-American arrivals to northern cities. In 1968, you have the Kerner Commission demand more social services as a way to deal with anger fueling inner city riots. I'd think it be more shocking if racial opinion *hadn't* become tightly bound up with views on the welfare state.

Posted by rd | August 8, 2007 9:06 PM

DetroitBlog makes a feature of posts with lots of pictures showing how the forest is taking back parts of Detroit, such as here:

http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=405

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 8, 2007 9:19 PM

Sailer's and rd's comments demonstrate why this topic is one where a whippersnapper might be at a disadvantage. I wonder if MY's follow up was originally going to connect the public perception of welfare to Reagan-era campaign comments.

Posted by Fred | August 8, 2007 10:25 PM

I consider myself a liberal much more than I consider myself a progressive.

Posted by Julian Elson | August 8, 2007 10:25 PM

Matt should read Rice U. historian Allen Matusow's 1984 history of the liberal crack-up in the 1960s: "The Unraveling of America." It would give him needed background on this ancient history.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 8, 2007 10:43 PM

"Matt should read Rice U. historian Allen Matusow's 1984 history of the liberal crack-up in the 1960s: 'The Unraveling of America'."

I haven't read Matusow's book, but I do want to take this moment to say:

Fight for Rice,
Rice fight on,
Loyal sons arise,
The Blue and Gray for Rice today,
Comes breaking through the skies.
Fight, fight, fight!
Stand and cheer,
Drink more beer,
Sammy leads the way,
Onward go to crush the foe,
We'll fight for Blue and Gray!

Or I think that's how it went. Anyway, what were we talking about?

Posted by Mark in Houston | August 8, 2007 11:14 PM

E to the x, dy, dx,
E to the x, dx!
Secant, tangent, cosine, sine,
Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine,
Square root, cube root, BTU,
Compass, Slide rule, Go Rice U.!

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 9, 2007 12:41 AM

"Northern liberal states started raising welfare payments substantially and made it easier for unwed mothers to collect AFDC in the early to mid 1960s, and, as we would now expect, the illegitimacy and homicide rates turned up sharply in 1964-1965, with disastrous black riots in 1965-1968. The once great American city of Detroit has never recovered from the 1967 riot, and now the forest is slowly retaking Detroit's State Fair neighborhood between 6 Mile and 8 Mile Roads."

That little forest point is so endearing. But onto the question. I can sort of understand how you could argue that illegitimacy rates would rise because of welfare. I do not understand how it is even remotely possible to accuse the welfare program for inspiring homocidal activity, however. I am also at a loss regarding how liberals could be implicated in the Detroit race riots-that's about as sensible a statement to make as Dinesh D'Sousa's claim that liberals in America are the reason why there is terrorism in the Middle East.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 9, 2007 3:06 AM

One would expect the homicide rate to increase as the number of young people increased in proportion to the overall population. The Baby Boom began in 1946. The first Baby Boomers turned 18 in 1964. As expected, homicide rates began to increase and remained high until the Boomers got old and stopped killing folks.

Posted by William | August 9, 2007 7:36 AM

That article is about much more than welfare. I highly recommend that you read it all. The money quote for me was:

My recitation of the brutal facts about punishment in today’s America may sound to some like a primal scream at this monstrous social machine that is grinding poor black communities to dust. And I confess that these brutal facts do at times incline me to cry out in despair. But my argument is analytical, not existential. Its principal thesis is this: we law-abiding, middle-class Americans have made decisions about social policy and incarceration, and we benefit from those decisions, and that means from a system of suffering, rooted in state violence, meted out at our request. We had choices and we decided to be more punitive. Our society—the society we have made—creates criminogenic conditions in our sprawling urban ghettos, and then acts out rituals of punishment against them as some awful form of human sacrifice.

Posted by eriks | August 9, 2007 8:30 AM

Sailer's claim that the race riots are to blame for the state of Detroit today are preposterously off base, but I assume everyone understands that everything looks like a nail to him. A very, very black and criminally-minded nail.

Posted by Steve | August 9, 2007 9:35 AM

Steve,

Since Sailer is off-base, as you suggest, perhaps you can enlighten us as to why Detroit had its race riots and parts of it are now being retaken by the forest.

Posted by Juan | August 9, 2007 12:59 PM

Re: Northern liberal states started raising welfare payments substantially and made it easier for unwed mothers to collect AFDC in the early to mid 1960s, and, as we would now expect, the illegitimacy and homicide rates turned up sharply in 1964-1965

I will give you the benefit of the doubt on a conenction between illegitimacy rates and afdc, but I cannot perceive any possible causal connection with homocide rates.
By the way the 1960s are a very long time ago now. Many of us (myself included) have no memory of them and are quite turned off when either the Left or the Right rants about the 60's. Might as well refight the battles of the 1860s (at least those were more profound and more fascinating as history). Isn't it time we started worrying about the future instead rehashing old brouhahas from before half the electorate was even born?

Re: DetroitBlog makes a feature of posts with lots of pictures showing how the forest is taking back parts of Detroit, such as here:

I've been to Detroit (grew up in Ann Arbor in fact) and I don't doubt that the place is a mess. However I would suggest, from my own memory, that the big problem was not anything that happened in 1967, but rather a bit later on: a profoundly corrupt and incompetent mayoral administration in the 1980s. Detroit would have recovered from its riots; other cities have. Detroit was mortally wounded by the spectacular and long-running misgovernance of Coleman Young.

Posted by Jonf | August 9, 2007 1:40 PM

"Isn't it time we started worrying about the future instead rehashing old brouhahas from before half the electorate was even born?"

Good point. Why try to learn from history? We can just repeat it, making the same mistakes again.

"...the big problem was not anything that happened in 1967, but rather a bit later on: a profoundly corrupt and incompetent mayoral administration in the 1980s."

Right: the proximate cause was the corrupt, incompetent government voted in once Detroit became a nearly all-black city. But what drove out the whites, making this corrupt, incompetent, black government possible? Oh yes: the riots.

Posted by Harry | August 9, 2007 1:58 PM

Harry - you're racist. Your opinions are meaningless.

Matthew -- when are you going to give us your view on this? Is it 'later' yet?

Posted by Karen | August 9, 2007 3:34 PM

But what drove out the whites, making this corrupt, incompetent, black government possible? Oh yes: the riots.

Conversely, what kept in the blacks, not all of whom were lawless rioters (a fact you may not be willing to stipulate to, given your history)? Systematic housing discrimination in the suburban communities, that's what.

However I would suggest, from my own memory, that the big problem was not anything that happened in 1967, but rather a bit later on: a profoundly corrupt and incompetent mayoral administration in the 1980s.

You're quite right here, although our racist friends certainly have seized upon a kernel of truth in noting that the riots started the ball rolling downhill. Sailer's idea that liberals caused the race riots with their welfare programs is, of course, straight out of the sort of pamphlets that aren't exchanged in polite company. "Blacks rioted because they couldn't handle all that welfare largesse!" Uh, yeah.

Posted by Steve | August 9, 2007 3:52 PM

Okay, how did Detroit get that way?

I'd point first to advances in logistics (containerization, over-the-road trucking, the later deregulation of same, computerization and supply line networking) made it much less imperative to maintain the entire American auto industry in the form of giant complexes right on top of each other. This gave the companies, for the first time losing market share to international competition, the opportunity to gradually pull out of Detroit and build fresh company towns in the suburbs and later tax-priveleged properties in the backwoods of "right-to-work" states.

The same thing happenned throughout the Rust Belt, as mechanization, imported materials, and imported finished goods meant that you no longer needed to maintain a huge army of men to dig rocks from the earth, melt them, and bolt them together, an activity which was for a period pretty much the foundation of the American economy. And even what remainder you did need, you didn't need all in one place.

So the city now finds itself vastly overbuilt. Whites are, on average, wealthier, but government policy from the GI bill through the S&L bailout has been to encourage people to hold as much wealth as possible in housing stock. More able to leave and more exposed if they stay, those that can sell out and flee the city. It's a vicious cycle. Those that can't, those that remain, are disproportionately poor and black.

Posted by Senescent | August 9, 2007 4:19 PM

Re: We can just repeat it, making the same mistakes again.

Time does not go backwards. We have no choice biut to go forward. I think we should study history, but we shouldn't live it. Leave the dead to bury the dead-- unless you think we should also be debating Free Silver, Votes for Women, Independence from Britain, etc.

Re: Right: the proximate cause was the corrupt, incompetent government voted in once Detroit became a nearly all-black city.

white people have been known to vote in and maintain incompetent corrupt governments too. Indeed we don't even have to go back in time to find a nationwide example staring us in the face today. But as for Detroit, "White flight" started well before 1967. The suburban subdivision in which I grew up was built in thr 50s, and some of its residents were white "refugess" from Detroit.

Posted by JonF | August 9, 2007 8:23 PM

Re: This gave the companies, for the first time losing market share to international competition, the opportunity to gradually pull out of Detroit and build fresh company towns in the suburbs and

A bit of a quibble, but auto factories were always located in suburbs: Dearborn, Ypsilanti, Wayne, Warren, Flint (Ok, not really a suburb but a small city in its own right), etc. Henry Ford was a native of Dearborn and located production and his HQ there where land was cheap and a streetcar system could bring in workers from Detroit. GM also located its facilities mainly outside the city limits of Detroit proper. One of the earliest true freeways in the country, the embryonic seed for I-94, was built as a bypass for US12 (Michigan Ave) to speed commuters from Detroit out to the GM Hydramatic plant at Ypsilanti.

Posted by JonF | August 10, 2007 2:29 PM

A bit of a quibble, but auto factories were always located in suburbs

Fair enough. To clarify, I'm saying more that they moved from the inner suburbs, an integrated part of the Detroit metro area connected by railroad spurs, to more far-off locations. From "streetcar suburbs" to "edge cities", you could say.

Posted by Senescent | August 10, 2007 2:51 PM