Experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and support for safety-net expansion

Did individuals' experiences with the harms of the COVID-19 pandemic influence their attitudes towards safety-net programs? To assess this question, we combine rich informa-tion about county-level impacts and individual-level perceptions of the early pandemic, repeated measurements of attitudes towards safety-net expansion, and pre-pandemic mea-surements of related political attitudes. Individuals facing higher county-level impact or greater perceived risks are more likely to support long-term expansions to unemployment insurance and government-provided healthcare when surveyed in June 2020. These differ-ences persist across time, with experiences in the early months of the pandemic remaining strongly predictive of attitudes towards safety-net expansion in early 2021. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )