TY - JOUR
T1 - Perceptions of economic insecurity evidence from the survey of economic expectations
AU - Dominitz, Jeff
AU - Manski, Charles F.
N1 - Funding Information:
JEFF DOMINITZ is instructor in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. CHARLES F. MANSKI is professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. This research is supported by grant SBR-9223220 from the National Science Foundation and by grant 91ASPE236A from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The authors are grateful to Bob Lee and Jim Sweet for enabling collection of the data by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center. They have benefited from the comments of three anonymous referees and from the opportunity to present this work in seminars at the California Institute of Technology, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Harvard University, and the Santa Fe Institute.
PY - 1997
Y1 - 1997
N2 - The Survey of Economic Expectations (SEE) is a new national survey initiated in an effort to learn how Americans perceive their near-term futures. This article uses SEE data on more than two thousand labor force participants interviewed in 1994 and 1995 to describe how Americans in the labor force perceive the risk of near-term economic misfortune. We measure economic insecurity through responses to questions eliciting subjective probabilities of three events in the year ahead: absence of health insurance, victimization by burglary, and job loss. Respondents are willing to describe their expectations in probabilistic terms, and they appear to do so in a meaningful way. Using the responses to classify individuals as relatively secure, relatively insecure, and highly insecure, we find that respondents with a high risk of one adverse outcome tend also to perceive high risks of the other outcomes. Males and females have similar risk perceptions, but there is substantial variation in perceptions by schooling and race. In particular, black males and males with no postsecondary schooling tend to perceive much greater insecurity than do others in the labor force. Expectations and realizations of health insurance coverage and of job loss tend to match up closely, but respondents substantially overpredict the risk of burglary.
AB - The Survey of Economic Expectations (SEE) is a new national survey initiated in an effort to learn how Americans perceive their near-term futures. This article uses SEE data on more than two thousand labor force participants interviewed in 1994 and 1995 to describe how Americans in the labor force perceive the risk of near-term economic misfortune. We measure economic insecurity through responses to questions eliciting subjective probabilities of three events in the year ahead: absence of health insurance, victimization by burglary, and job loss. Respondents are willing to describe their expectations in probabilistic terms, and they appear to do so in a meaningful way. Using the responses to classify individuals as relatively secure, relatively insecure, and highly insecure, we find that respondents with a high risk of one adverse outcome tend also to perceive high risks of the other outcomes. Males and females have similar risk perceptions, but there is substantial variation in perceptions by schooling and race. In particular, black males and males with no postsecondary schooling tend to perceive much greater insecurity than do others in the labor force. Expectations and realizations of health insurance coverage and of job loss tend to match up closely, but respondents substantially overpredict the risk of burglary.
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U2 - 10.1086/297795
DO - 10.1086/297795
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0031483804
VL - 61
SP - 261
EP - 287
JO - Public Opinion Quarterly
JF - Public Opinion Quarterly
SN - 0033-362X
IS - 2
ER -