How does personal experience shape views on welfare spending?

The Great Recession, coupled with concerns over the growing budget deficit, resulted in a renewed debate about the social safety net. While support for welfare benefits usually splits along partisan lines, Yotam Margalit examines how personal experiences of hardship during the financial crisis affected attitudes towards social spending. While he finds that first-hand experience of a job loss does lead to a convergence in the welfare preferences of left and right-leaning voters, the data suggest that the changes in the welfare attitudes of the job losers are fairly short-lived, dissipating soon after they find new employment. Overall, the first four years of the Great Recession are found to have brought about a drop in the public’s support for welfare spending.