Welfare and Citizenship: The Effects of Government Assistance on Young Adults' Civic Participation

Abstract

Recent scholarship and public discourse highlight an apparent waning of civic engagement in the United States. Although the welfare state is generally thought to support democracy by reducing economic inequality, it may paradoxically contribute to political disempowerment of some groups. We examine the effects of state interventions on civic participation among young adults, hypothesizing that involvement with stigmatizing social programs, such as welfare, reduces political engagement while receipt of non-stigmatizing government assistance does not dampen civic involvement. Using official voting records and survey data from the Youth Development Study (YDS), a longitudinal community sample of young adults, a series of regression models suggests that welfare recipients are less likely to vote than non-recipients, whereas recipients of non-means tested government assistance participate similarly to young adults who do not receive government help. These effects hold even when background factors, self-efficacy, and prior voting behavior are controlled. Welfare receipt is not associated, however, with suppressed participation in non-state arenas such as volunteer work. Intensive interviews with YDS welfare recipients are used to illustrate and develop the analysis.Over the past few decades, social science and public discussion have increasingly focused on changes in civic engagement and citizenship in the United States. Declining voter turnout rates, an increase in single-issue, self-interested politics, and a retreat from associational ties and community involvement, amongst other trends, have signaled to many the weakening of American democracy (Putnam 1995(Putnam , 2000Etzioni 1996; Bellah et al. 1985). Such concerns carry particular significance in the United States, where the strength of the nation and its democracy historically has been thought to rest in the active civic life of its citizenry (Tocqueville [1835(Tocqueville [ ] 1966.Compelling evidence suggests that the United States has witnessed a general decline in civic participation over the past few decades. Voter turnout rates have decreased from a high of 63 percent in the 1960 presidential election to a low of 49 percent in 1996 (U.S. Census Bureau 2008). Moreover, citizens have expressed higher rates of cynicism and disengagement from the political process, and appear to be retreating from shared public life and civic involvement NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript (Etzioni 1996;Putnam 1995Putnam , 2000. These trends are particularly disturbing among young Americans who have comparatively low voting rates and who may be establishing patterns that will persist into the future. Even with the recent rise from [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004], only 41 percent of 18-20 year olds and 42.5 percent of 21-24 year olds reported voting in the 2004 presidential election. Such changes have been viewed as posing a threat to the overall well-being of American society. Research suggests that civic engagement benefits socie...

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“… 29. For further information about the potential of social and welfare policies to affect civic behavior, see Bruch, Marx Ferree, and Soss (2010), Campbell (2012), and Swartz and colleagues (2009). …”

Disability and Vulnerability: Interpretations of Risk in Everyday Life

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