Presidential Framing of Health Inequality from FDR to Trump
November 5, 2021
3:10-4:30pm
Drew Halfmann, UC Davis
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Research on American framing of health inequality finds that
government health policy reports give more attention to
inequalities by race and ethnicity than by SES. In this paper, I
examine another key site of health inequality
framing—presidential messages. Through quantitative and
qualitative content analysis of ninety years of messages, I find
that presidents mentioned low-income people in more messages and
in more committed tones than racially-oppressed people for the
entire period. The pattern of these mentions also varied by
political party and time. Beginning with Kennedy, Democrats
mentioned both low-income people and racially-oppressed people
more often than Republicans, and beginning with Reagan,
Republicans did not mention racially-oppressed people at all.
After Johnson, Democrats mentioned low-income and
racially-oppressed people in a smaller percentage of their
messages. The only presidents to speak of low-income people in
strongly committed tones were Democratic presidents prior to
Carter and the only presidents to speak of racially-oppressed
people in strongly committed tones were Kennedy and Johnson. The
paper explores potential explanations for these partisan and
temporal patterns and for differences between government reports
and presidential messages.