Reframing Welfare Policy: Experimental Impacts on Public Perceptions

ABSTRACT Discourse surrounding the American welfare state frames the public assistance‐reliant poor as behaviorally deviant and existing in a state of government dependency. Conversely, employers are framed as emancipators, lifting those poor out of their dependency through labor discipline and social correction. The result of these frames has been the stigmatization of those reliant on public assistance and the social uplifting of job creators. Through a survey experiment carried out through the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, I assess how this socially constructed dichotomy shapes mass attitudes toward public assistance. This experiment exploits the unique association between the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), wherein employers may access said tax credit upon hiring a SNAP participant, to evaluate whether support for SNAP changes upon exposure to frames representing the employer as the key policy beneficiary. I find that framing SNAP as re‐warding to employers diminishes or increases policy support, depending on respondent ideology, with liberals being more influenced by the framing than conservatives.