More than three quarters of conservatives say the poor “have it easy” | Washington Post

By Christopher Ingraham

The Pew Research Center is out with part two of its huge survey of American politics. The first part, released a couple weeks ago, focused on political polarization. For this round, Pew’s researchers have created a political typology which “sorts voters into cohesive groups based on their attitudes and values.” There’s plenty to say about this – and you can see where you fall in Pew’s typology quiz here! – but for now I want to focus on the chart above, particularly the left half.

More than three quarters of conservative Americans – those in the steadfast conservative, business conservative, and young outsider typology groups – agree that “poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything.” Only seven percent of steadfast conservatives say that the poor “have hard lives.”

Even a not-insignificant share of left-leaning groups say that the poor have it easy. But overall the widespread agreements among conservatives on this point is what’s really striking here. There are reasonable, well-intentioned arguments on either side of many poverty-related issues – about the causes of poverty (see the right half of the chart), or whether government benefits provide a leg up or simply perpetuate poverty, for instance.


Read the rest of this article here.


Read the original Pew Research study here:


Curated from www.washingtonpost.com

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