Are There Sex Differences in Fiscal Political Preferences?

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between attitudes on potential uses of the budget surplus and sex. Survey results from the Fall of 1999 show relatively weak support overall for using a projected surplus to reduce taxes, with respondents more likely to prefer increased social spending on education or social security. There were, however, significant sex differences, confirmed by multinomial logit analysis: men were far more likely than women to support minimizing “private bads,” that is, tax cuts or paying down the national debt; women were more likely to support expanded spending on public goods, such as education or social security. The strongest sex effect from the Fall 1999 surveys was that women were far more likely to express no opinion than men. When respondents were primed that the tax laws are biased against two-worker families, men significantly changed their stated preferences; women did not. A second round of surveys conducted from July through mid-October, 2000—a period encompassing the two major party political nominating conventions and the brunt of the presidential election campaign—revealed a dramatic narrowing of sex differences in fiscal political preferences, with an almost complete elimination of the gap in “no opinion” responses as to using the surplus to fund a tax cut. Combined with other recent work, this new research suggests that sex differences in fiscal political preferences are a far more complex, nuanced phenomenon than previously thought.