The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is widely recognized as the United States’ most effective contemporary policy for reducing poverty, and scholars have found that it elevates recipients’ sense of social inclusion. This raises the question of how it influences recipients’ civic engagement, namely their attitudes about government and political participation. We draw on policy feedback scholarship to consider expectations. Then we use a unique dataset to compare recipients of the EITC, Aid to Families With Dependent Children/Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and nonrecipients of either policy in order to identify how policy features are related to political attitudes and behaviors. We find that despite the benefits they receive, EITC recipients experience low external political efficacy, but are more likely to be politically active than their peers.

Nearly, all Americans have received social policy benefits, yet many do not acknowledge “using government social programs.” Why? Work on the submerged state proposes that people who receive social assistance through market mechanisms do not realize that the benefits they get are the result of government policy, and therefore, they do not acknowledge receiving government assistance. Others point to motivated reasoning or social desirability bias to explain the gap between acknowledging and using social programs. We classify the existing literature into three broad explanations—delivery, definition, and desirability—and propose that each may be responsible for people's inability to accurately report using government social programs. We test these mechanisms with original survey experiments. The results of this study provide support for the theory that multiple mechanisms are at work in shaping social policy acknowledgment, but they confirm that a partisan acknowledgement gap exists across a variety of conditions, and it persists despite treatments designed to minimize it. The study has significant implications for the conditions under which partisanship and policy usage coalesce to undermine support for government social expenditures, and it helps to explain the persistence of a “makers vs. takers” logic in American politics.

The Tax Reform Act of 1969 introduced formal legal barriers designed to limit the political activities of foundations. How do these constraints affect foundations' funding decisions and the capacity of public interest organizations that rely on philanthropic support for their advocacy work? We argue that the policy regime governing private foundations' work has produced two layers of feedback effects that not only shape philanthropic behavior, but also create real obstacles for grantee organizations and their advocacy efforts. We contend that, particularly for recipient organizations who (1) have a primary mission of political advocacy and mobilization and (2) rely heavily on philanthropic support, the policies governing foundation behavior can create incompatible goals between grantors and grantees pursuing policy change. Drawing on records of grant activity, archival material, and elite interviews, we explore this argument using a salient case study: anti-predatory lending reform. Ultimately, we find that policy restrictions on foundation giving may limit the capacity and threaten the success of advocacy organizations engaged in grassroots political work necessary to promote policy change, thus curtailing the potential for the very reforms foundations are eager to pursue.