Misinformation

 

In 1946, a Roper/Fortune survey asked "Here are three different kinds of job:
A job which pays quite a low income, but which you were sure of keeping.
A job which pays a good income but which you have a 50-50 chance of losing.
A job which pays an extremely high income if you make the grade but in which you lose almost everything if you don't make it.
If you had your choice, which would you pick?"

Back in 2013, I had a post on this question, which noted that it was asked again in 1957 and said "unfortunately, the question has never been asked again."  That was wrong--it's been asked twice since then, as well as once in 1948 (maybe I should say "at least," in case I'm still missing some).  The results:

           Safe        50/50      Risky

1946      56%       21%        18%

1948      47%        32%        19%

1957       42%        26%        26%

1962       48%         33%        14%

1981        22%        34%         36%

There is a move towards more risk/more reward, with the exception of 1962.  I'm not sure if that reflects a short-term change or some other difference--the 1962 survey one was done by Gallup while the others were all by the Roper organization.  There was also a difference between 1981 and all previous surveys--the earlier ones had asked men and single women about their job, and asked married women about their husband's job--that is, what you would like him to have.  In 1981, they asked all employed people about their own job (and didn't ask people who weren't employed).  But there was still a change after adjusting for this difference:  "in 1957, men were almost evenly divided among the three options, while almost 50% of women chose the safe job and only about 20% chose the high income/high risk job."  In 1981, only 19% of men chose the safe job and 45% chose the risky one, while women were pretty evenly divided (29%/39%/32%).  

I wondered if opinions on this question were related to political views--that is, people who thought that they could "make the grade" would be more conservative.  The 1981 survey didn't have many political questions, but it did have one about whether you would describe yourself as a supporter or critic of President Reagan.  There was a relationship--people who favored riskier choices were more likely to be supporters, but it became considerably smaller and no longer statistically significant after adding a few controls.  One important control variable was race--black people were more likely to favor the safe job and less likely to support Reagan.  Another was education--more educated people were considerably more likely to favor the risky job, and more likely to support Reagan--here is support for Reagan by education among whites:

not HS grad      62%

HS grad            70% 

some college    75%

bachelor's         80%

graduate           71%

I was a bit surprised by that, even thought I knew that at one time education was associated with support for the Republicans and have written about that in this blog.  I felt like 1981 was part of the "modern" period of political alignments--I don't think that I would have been surprised to see that pattern just a few years before.  I guess the lesson is that thinking in terms of categories or eras has a strong appeal, even when you know that the changes were gradual.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]