Race of Recipient and Support for Welfare in Canada

Abstract

Drawing on a unique experimental design, this paper examines the ways in which racialized images influence attitudes toward redistributive policy. While work in the US points to a strong racialization of welfare attitudes, little research explores the ways in which race may structure attitudes about welfare elsewhere. In the Canadian context, our results suggest that support for redistribution is lower when recipients are Aboriginal than when they are portrayed as white or from another racial minority. As we have seen in the US, then, support for welfare is related to perceptions about the race of the recipient, as well as the type of benefit received.

Keywords: Social assistance, Aboriginals, Race and Ethnicity, Welfare, Public Opinion