Mini-Talks in American Politics and Public Policy with Annabelle Hutchinson and Molly Offer-Westort, Yale University

AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP

“Prospectus Brain-Storming Session: The Changing U.S. Labor Market and the Political Gender Gap” with Annabelle Hutchinson

Abstract: The U.S. labor market has changed drastically in just a few decades. A rise in female earnings, a decline in manufacturing employment, and a rise in the number of women attending college have led to great strides in gender equality and a reduction in the gender wage gap. By construction, these changes have also led to a decrease in the relative earnings and economic power of men. How has the decline in men’s relative status affected gender attitudes, political preferences, and the gender voting gap? In places where relatively more men have lost jobs and economic status, do we see a backlash regarding gender attitudes and political preferences? The goal of this session is to get feedback on an early stage of my prospectus.

Broadly, this project speaks to a variety of political questions, such as:

1. The origin of and continued adherence to gender norms
2. Why do people vote? Do men and women vote differently and why?
3. Where do preferences for redistribution and other political preferences come from? Why do men and women have different political preferences?
4. How have economic and social changes affected politics?

Annabelle Hutchinson is a 3rd Year Political Science PhD student at Yale. Her recent research has focused on understanding American’s preferences for redistribution, perceptions of inequality, and the political economy of gender in a comparative perspective. She is currently developing a prospectus focusing on how economic and social changes in the United States have affected gender attitudes and the political gender gap in voting and policy preferences.

“Negative Income Tax Experiments: Addressing Differential Attrition” with Molly Offer-Westort

Description: This chapter of my dissertation will apply recent advances in statistical and causal inference to re-analyze data from the Negative Income Tax experiments, four large-scale policy experiments carried out by the United States Government in the 1960s through 1980s. In spite of the massive costs in time and expense in conducting the experiment and gathering data, features of the experiments’ design and implementation hindered efforts to measure effects. Current estimates are largely inconclusive and rely on significant assumptions about attrition. The approach used in this analysis will test the robustness of treatment effect estimates to alternative identifying assumptions, recovering point estimates of regime-specific and overall average treatment effects.

Molly Offer-Westort is a doctoral student in political science at Yale University. Her work is on quantitative methodology for social science research, as well as how group experiences and social identity affect redistributive preferences.