Sociology Department Colloquium: Martin Gilens

Date
Thu January 21st 2016, 12:30 - 1:45pm
Location
Mendenhall
Sociology Department Colloquium: Martin Gilens

Please join us for a colloquium being given by Martin Gilens, Professor of Politics at Princeton University.

"The Benevolent Baker: Altruism and Political Preferences in the United States"

Affluent Americans appear to have far more influence over government policymaking than do the poor or the middle-class. But policy outcomes do not uniformly benefit the well-off. One reason might be that a significant fraction of the affluent support downwardly redistributive policies that they are unlikely to directly benefit from (and that they are likely to pay the costs of). In this project I seek to understand the reasons for such non-self-interested policy preferences, focusing in my talk on the role of altruistic concern with the well-being of the less advantaged.