IZA has a new discussion paper out called
What Does the Public Know About Economic Policy, and how does it know it?
Written by Alan S. Blinder and Alan B. Krueger, it discusses their work using a phone survey conducted recently which asked people various questions about their thoughts on economic policy, some fact based questions, and questions about where they got their information on economic topics. The results, outlined in the first part of the paper, make for interesting reading:
On average, conservatives thought that the federal budget deficit was much larger ($333 billion vs. $177 billion), that Social Security benefits were a bit more generous ($873 vs. $766 per month), and that a lower share of the U.S. population lacked health insurance (32% vs. 40%)—all as compared to liberals. Conservatives were also more likely than liberals to report being aware that the Social Security trust fund is projected to run a deficit in about a decade (82% vs. 74%) and less likely to say that Medicare already provided coverage for prescription drugs (23% vs. 34%).
Note that the use of 'conservative' and 'liberal' is a self-reported label, i.e. the people were asked where they felt they fit in the political spectrum.
The results they draw, although tentative, are summarized quite nicely in the conclusion:
As a broad generalization — to which many exceptions have been noted in this paper —
ideology seems to play a stronger role in shaping opinion on economic policy issues than either self-interest or knowledge, although specific (as opposed to general) knowledge does influence opinion on a number of matters.
[...]
The contrast with homo economicus — who is well-informed, non-ideological, and extremely self-interested—could hardly be more stark. Instead, our findings seem more consistent with an idea expressed in the political science literature: that people often use ideology as a short-cut heuristic for deciding what position to take,
when properly informing oneself is difficult.
I found the paper gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies for two reasons - one, the idea that people make their decisions based on "ideology" (although I in fact take issue with the authors' use of that word, given that they themselves note that it is political parties, rather than ideology, driving things - for example, on page 27 of the PDF - "In a sign of these unusual times, liberals were far more likely to rate the budget deficit a serious problem (72%) than either conservatives (44%) or non-politicals (56%)."). The other thing which scared me was their findings that "In a word, television tops the list of how Americans get their economic information; everything else lags well behind."
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