Am I My Brother's Keeper? Epidemics, Agenda-Setting, and Public Support for Health Policy Interventions
Posted: 22 Feb 2011
Abstract
Does public support for government action and intervention on a health condition or epidemic depend on whom the public thinks if most vulnerable? Using a unique set of embedded experiments, we test two treatment dimensions of public support: who is affected (children or elderly; Whites or African Americans); what the illness is (diabetes, depression, obesity, H1N1 flu). Treatments are variations along these two dimensions in a fabricated media story on a health epidemic; our control is a story about property rights over a meteorite. The data are 1,290 respondents in an online survey with Polimetrix. Dependent variables are policy frame items – whether the framing is threat, culpability, punishment, or intervention – and respondents' willingness to pay for specific policies – medical research, free screening, public education, universal coverage, and targeted services for the poor. We find the largest differences in our willingness to pay items. With obesity policy, support is generally greater for whites than blacks and the elderly than children; with depression, support is greater for blacks than whites (except for services for the poor) and (where significant) for children than the elderly; with diabetes preventions, there is much higher levels of support for the elderly than children; finally, with H1N1 prevention, the public is generally more supportive when those at-risk are defined as blacks than whites, and children than elderly.
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