“College Socialization and the Economic Views of Affluent Americans” with Tali Mendelberg, Princeton

AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP

Abstract: Affluent Americans support more conservative economic policies than the nonaffluent, and government responds disproportionately to these views. Yet little is known about the emergence of these consequential views. We develop, test, and find support for a theory of class cultural norms: These preferences are partly traceable to socialization that occurs on predominantly affluent college campuses, especially those with norms of financial gain, and especially among socially embedded students. The economic views of the student’s cohort also matter, in part independently of affluence. We use a large panel data set with high response rate and more rigorous causal inference strategies than previous socialization studies. The affluent campus effect holds with matching, among students with limited school choice, and in a natural experiment; and it passes placebo tests. College socialization partly explains why affluent Americans support economically conservative policies.

Speaker: Tali Mendelberg is Associate Professor of Politics at Princeton University. Professor Mendelberg studies inequality and politics. Her book The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton University Press, 2001), won the American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for “the best book published in the United States during the prior year on government, politics or international affairs.” Her areas of specialization are political communication; gender; race; class; public opinion; political psychology; and experimental methods.