Dramatic shifts in spending priorities favor education

The 1990s is the decade of education, new data on public opinion in the United States shows. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which has been tracking public opinion on a variety of issues for 26 years, has found that during this decade, support for education has risen to the top of America’s priority list, surpassing concern about spending more money to fight crime and drugs.

Surprisingly, the survey found support for education is not determined entirely by self-interest. Although the number of families with school-aged children has plunged since the survey was began, support for education has increased. The proportion of families with children under 18 has fallen from 55 percent of American households in 1972 to 38 percent in 1998.

In 1973 and 1975, education spending ranked six out of 11 in Americans’ list of spending priorities. It has been in first place in surveys conducted in 1990, 1996, and most recently, 1998. It was in second or third place in other years of the decade.

The data, gathered as part of NORC’s General Social Survey, is relied on heavily by scholars and policymakers because it provides a consistent measure of public opinion.

Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey, points out that support for more spending on education is strong for three reasons: 1) national concern about the shortcomings of the educational system, 2) the need for educated workers who can take advantage of the information revolution and the global economy and 3) the ability of supporters of education to gain bipartisan approval for their initiatives.

Among other trends in public spending priorities are these:

• The gap between cities and suburbs in support for more education spending is narrowing. The gap fell from 13 percentage points in 1973 to 4 percentage points in 1998.
• Women (69 percent), African-Americans (81 percent) and people with college degrees (67 percent) are most likely to support increases in education spending.
• Support for increased spending to reduce crime (56 percent) and drugs (51 percent) ranked fourth and fifth in the survey, their lowest rankings in three decades.

A full report on Americans’ spending priorities is on the NORC Web site in the What’s New section: http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/online/spendedu.htm.

Additional news contact: Tom W. Smith (773) 256-6288