A large body of scholarship has shown that concentrated wealth distorts the policy agenda, reduces support for redistributive programs, and privileges the preferences of the affluent. Yet much of this work treats inequality as a divide between elites and the mass public. Far less attention has been paid to inequality within the political elite itself, particularly among elected officials. Political scientist Darrian Stacy will examine how personal wealth among U.S. Senators shapes patterns of lawmaking, committee activity, and political representation.
Many Americans want government to improve housing affordability. Yet, proposals for affordable housing often encounter public resistance. Political scientist Tali Mendelberg argues that some of the resistance comes from concerns about upward redistribution, which are relatively neglected in existing scholarship. Americans tend to believe that so-called affordable housing is not truly affordable and unduly benefits wealthy actors. In a pilot survey, Mendelberg finds wide support for affordable housing when it primarily benefits people of low and modest means.
Individuals facing increased climate risks must decide, as a way of adapting to those risks, whether to relocate or remain in place. The decision to stay or go depends on how people perceive local climate risks, their resources, and social attachment. Insurance shapes adaptation choices such as whether households rebuild, relocate, mobilize for public aid or engage in other actions. Political scientists Alexander Gazmararian, Sabrina Arias and Christopher Blair will examine how disasters, bluelining, and insurance reforms influence how people adapt to increasing climate risks.
People disagree over the generosity of (and the need for) targeted social spending in areas such as welfare, unemployment benefits, bank bailouts and student loan forgiveness. Political scientist Charlotte Cavaillé will unpack the moral reasoning underpinning such disagreements. She asks: Do people who view large-scale mutual aid as unfair—because it benefits “free riders”—reason differently about opportunistic, antisocial behavior more generally?
Immigration is a multi-generational process that is increasingly shaped by legal status. There is consistent evidence that less-permanent migrants fare less well relative to those who are more secure in their U.S. residence. But, to date, we do not know whether this is because of unobservable differences (e.g., in motivation or social networks) associated with both permanent residence and material wellbeing.
Political scientist Beatrice Magistro argues that Americans’ mental models of artificial intelligence’s (AI) economic effects – whether they see AI as complementing or substituting workers, raising or lowering prices, increasing or reducing wages – will determine electoral coalitions and policy trajectories. Currently, no longitudinal dataset tracks how these workplace attitudes evolve. This project fills this gap by fielding four waves of a short (four-minute) survey through YouGov (2,000 per wave) over 18 months.
This project advances a new framework for understanding prejudice by distinguishing between category-level and cue-level bias. Whereas most experimental studies of discrimination focus on category-level prejudice—bias directed at entire groups identified through labels such as Black, gay, or immigrant—Naunov argues that much contemporary discrimination operates at the cue level, targeting the visible and audible markers that make those identities perceptible.
Administrative burdens impede access to social safety net programs and disproportionately affect marginalized groups, reinforcing existing inequalities. Government agencies increasingly deploy algorithmic decision-support tools to streamline processes and improve uptake. Yet growing evidence suggests that these tools can produce disparate impact and may automate inequality. What remains underexplored is how frontline staff interact with algorithmic outputs and whether cognitive biases in human–AI interaction translate into unequal, burden-creating choices.
Dwidar will investigate the practice of federal agency interventions to facilitate greater participation by advocates for socially and economically marginalized communities in American rulemaking, using the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Office of Public Participation (OPP) as a case. Do these interventions successfully promote greater civic access among public participants representing socially and economically marginalized constituencies in agency rulemaking? How are participants' advocacy behaviors shaped by this access?
How does knowledge of past atrocities shape support for contemporary redress policies? Relatedly, how do public memory projects shape political attitudes and support for transitional justice mechanisms? While lacking specific knowledge of past atrocities can be associated with denial of ongoing inequalities, recent research on the effects of memorializing past atrocities has shown that these efforts can increase support for democratic institutions and decrease support for previous repressive regimes.