Public Concern about Inflation and Unemployment In the United States: Trends, Correlates and Political Implications

Abstract

Although former President Eisenhower's forecast turned out to be wrong, numerous empirical studies show that macroeconomic performance has an important impact on mass political support for elected officials. Moreover, during recent years economic issues (principally inflation, energy and unemployment) have overshadowed other problem areas as sources of public concern. Indeed, not since the Great Depression of the 1930s and the immediate post World War II reconversion scare has the state of the economy occupied such a salient place on the public agenda. As the Gallup Poll time-series data in Figure 1 show, in every year since the American withdrawal from Vietnam was completed more than 70 percent of the public identified an economic issue as "the most important problem facing the country today."