Welcome! I am a PhD Candidate in political science at the University of Iowa.
I study public policy, political behavior, and poverty in the United States. I am particularly interested in social policy and welfare. My primary research agenda examines how public policies shape people's political orientations such as party identification and political behaviors like political participation. This process is called policy feedback. In my dissertation, I bridge scholarship on policy feedback and political socialization to better understand the long-term effects of government policies on individuals and their political behaviors and attitudes. With a focus on adolescence, I am studying how experiences with government policy programs during youth shape political orientations and political behaviors in adulthood. In one chapter, I find that experience with social welfare programs during adolescence has significant effects on the development of party identification. In my second chapter, I show that youth who grow up on welfare are less likely to vote in adulthood and that this negative effect persists across elections. |