How has the Covid pandemic affected Americans’ views of government and markets?

In a recent analysis published in Contemporary Economic Policy comparing Americans’ survey responses before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, participants developed less favorable views of government and markets after the outbreak of the pandemic.

Participants increased their support for greater government and to a lesser extent for redistribution to achieve greater social justice. The authors note that there is no evidence that this will lead to increased support for specific redistributive policies, nor for government to play a greater role in specific functions. Nor did they find significant differences in the impact of the pandemic on government and market attitudes through political ideology.

“We see increased support for government intervention in markets among those who, as a result of the pandemic, have come to believe more strongly that markets can cause harm, but given the overall gap we see between public attitudes and support for specific policies or government jobs, it is unclear whether changes in The situations caused by the pandemic will be permanent or will affect real-world behaviors in the future. Corresponding author Sandra Joffe, Ph.D. from Bates College, said sweeping changes in US policy and the social safety net that resulted from previous global crises suggest this might happen. .

URL upon publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/coep.12593

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Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin