Despite the expectation that welfare participation—because of its direct monetary payments—fosters strong attachments to the Democratic Party, the evidence to date suggests that welfare is unrelated to party identification. The majority of this research, however, focuses on adults, when partisan development is over. We argue that adolescent welfare participation may serve as a class-based signal that reinforces identification with the Democratic Party. Our inferences are generally consistent with this line of reasoning, but we also find important differences across race and ethnicity. Depending on the model, the likelihood of identifying with the Democratic Party in adulthood for white respondents is anywhere from 9 to 16% points higher for respondents who grew up in families that received welfare compared to those who did not have adolescent welfare participation. Other results, however, suggest a negative association between adolescent welfare use and identification with the Democratic Party for non-Hispanic black respondents. We conclude that despite the fact that adult welfare experiences lead to political disengagement, adolescent program participation can be sites of partisan learning.
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