Harvard-University of Chicago study Finds Americans favor Social Security, schools over tax cut

A poll by Harvard University and University of Chicago researchers has found that Americans, and especially African Americans, believe federal surplus dollars should go toward protecting Social Security and improving public schools.

The poll was conducted for the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute/Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. The study’s principal investigators, Lawrence D. Bobo, professor of sociology and Afro-American studies at Harvard, and Michael Dawson, professor of political science at Chicago, found differences among black and white respondents on priorities for spending the surplus. But taking care of Social Security and spending more on public education received, by an order of magnitude, substantially more support across both groups than the idea of a large tax cut.

Eighty two percent of whites and 80 percent of blacks mentioned “setting aside money to protect the Social Security retirement fund” most frequently when asked about priorities for a multi-billion-dollar surplus. Support for “a large tax cut for the middle class” ranked third out of seven possibilities among white respondents and sixth among black respondents. Even among white respondents who said they voted for President George W. Bush, protecting Social Security and increased spending on the military and defense were mentioned more often as priority items for the federal surplus than was a tax cut; and nearly as high a percentage mentioned spending on public education as mentioned a tax cut. The only group polled in which a substantial fraction rated a tax cut as their top priority was self-described “very conservative” whites.

Bobo and Dawson say the poll’s question on tax cutting was actually more specific–referring to a middle-class tax cut–than is the cut proposed by the new administration. “If anything,” they say in a report outlining the poll findings, “our data lead us to suspect that support for an across-the-board tax cut would fall even lower on the list of priorities, since it would be of such disproportionate benefit to the most well-off segments of the population.”

Additional Contact: Michael Dawson, (773) 702-8462