How to craft effective policy messages to advance equity

In our politically charged climate, advocates have often raised concerns that messages describing racial disparities in social outcomes can reduce or polarize support for public policies to address inequality. 

Cornell researchers tested this theory on one of recent history’s biggest success stories: the pandemic-era Child Tax Credit expansion, which reduced the number of children living below the poverty line by more than a third.  

Jeff Niederdeppe, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and senior associate dean of faculty development in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, and co-authors conducted two experiments that showed that messaging about benefits for Black and Hispanic children did not discourage respondents in general, and in fact mobilized communities of color.

The researchers found no evidence that centering information about racial or ethnic disparities in childhood poverty and racial equity-enhancing policy effectiveness causes backlash among white or Republican audiences. Their conclusion was that well-designed messages emphasizing policy efficacy can promote support for a redistributive tax policy across racial, ethnic and political identities. 

The findings speak to a larger conversation about how best to communicate about redistributive social policies – such as housing vouchers, food stamps, progressive income taxes and government-funded education programs – that may provide disproportional support for disadvantaged groups, Niederdeppe said. 

“We started workshopping broader potential messaging strategies for talking about social inequality,” said Niederdeppe, who’s also co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity. “When talking about disparities in poverty, people respond with their own biases, often blaming the poor, even poor children, for their situation.” 

In “Centering Historically Minoritized Populations to Design Effective Messages About an Evidence-Based Policy to Advance Social Equity,” published Jan. 3 in PNAS Nexus, researchers found that emphasizing the positive impact of the Child Tax Credit expansion “resonated across respondents with diverse racial and political identities,” Niederdeppe said. 

Jamila Michener, associate professor in the Department of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences, and senior associate dean of public engagement and director of the Cornell Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures at the Brooks School, and Colleen Barry, the inaugural dean of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, are co-authors of the study, as are Neil Lewis Jr., Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences and associate professor of communication (CALS), Norman Porticella, research associate in the Department of Communication (CALS); and Teairah Taylor, M.S. ’22, doctoral student in the field of communication. 

The researchers offered evidence for strategies to increase support and intentions to advocate for highly effective policies such as Child Tax Credit expansion. 

“The impetus for this study is that there have been high-profile public debates about whether it is disadvantageous or divisive to talk about race and racial impacts in the context of social policy,” Niederdeppe said. 

Conducting two randomized message trials, they sampled comparably sized groups of Black, Hispanic and white respondents from across the political spectrum. The first study compared six candidate messages to a control message and identified promising message strategies for replication. The second compared two messages advocating for Child Tax Credit expansion – one emphasizing policy benefits to all children (universalist) and the other describing benefits to all but even greater benefits to Black and Hispanic children (targeted universalist) – to a control message simply describing the policy. 

“Instead of talking only about problems, it’s talking about solutions. That’s a key ingredient,” said Niederdeppe, who studies media and messaging about health and social policy. “We also saw that messages that framed things in either a universal or targeted way increased Black and Hispanic respondents’ intentions to advocate for that policy.” 

Messaging didn’t sway white respondents in either direction; conveying racial disparities in poverty reduction with the Child Tax Credit didn’t alienate white respondents. And there were no benefits for omitting references to racial identity in messages to Black and Hispanic respondents. 

The researchers see this outcome as a missed opportunity to mobilize impacted communities. "Leaders have become increasingly reluctant to talk about racial equity implications of policies due to a fear that it might cause backlash from white people," said Lewis, who is also associate director of the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures. "But that fear keeps us from achieving broader collective goals of equity and justice. Not only did our messages not backfire among White people, they mobilized people of color who are most adversely affected by inequality."  

Outcomes suggest that for those programs aimed at addressing longstanding racial and economic inequality, obfuscations about racial and ethnic effects may be counterproductive. 

Other collaborators were from Wesleyan University and the University of Minnesota. This research was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

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Damien Sharp