We test the popular claim that poverty and inequality were
“dirty little secrets” until the media coverage of Hurricane
Katrina exposed them to a wider public. If this account were on the mark,
it would suggest that the absence of major antipoverty initiatives in the
United States is partly attributable to public ignorance and apathy
coupled with the narrowly rational decision on the part of policymakers to
attend to other issues about which the public evidently cares more. Using
the 2004 Maxwell Poll, we find strikingly high levels of awareness and
activism on poverty and inequality issues even prior to Katrina, clearly
belying the “dirty little secret” account. The follow-up
Maxwell Poll, which was administered in 2005 immediately after Katrina,
revealed only a slight increase in public awareness of poverty and
inequality. The Katrina effect was evidently dampened because (1) the
large number of preexisting poverty activists reduced the size of the
residual population “at risk” for conversion to antipoverty
activism, and (2) the remaining non-activists were ardently opposed to
poverty activism and hence unlikely to be receptive to the liberal message
coming out of Katrina.