| Foreign aid stimulates U.S. exports and creates jobs. It is estimated that for every billion dollars of exports about 20 to 30 thousand jobs are created in the U.S. Almost 20 percent of all U.S. jobs are export-dependent. Studies show that in the 1980s about 1.4 million U.S. workers lost their jobs as a result of the falloff of export to developing countries.;University surveys observed that unionized workers in the Midwestern states know very little about developing countries, specially about foreign aid given by U.S. to these countries. Other research has found that peoples' beliefs toward U.S. development aid and foreign assistance in general are based on general assumptions rather than data.;This research seeks to help decision makers to establish better foreign aid and labor policies by providing information about attitudes and beliefs of unionized workers in selected states toward foreign aid. The focus is on the workers' support for foreign aid programs by examining the moral advantages of foreign aid, its economic cost or disadvantages, and the perceptions of waste of U.S. dollars in foreign aid programs. These issues were tested based on four social psychological models of public support for public policy. These are: (1) the saliency model, (2) the rational self-interest model, (3) values model, and (4) the fairness model. In earlier studies, policies have been tested by these four models in isolation from each other. This research tested these models in an integrative form, not only by testing variables that relate to each model but also by relating foreign aid policy to U.S. social programs. The results of this study show that the saliency model was not sufficient to explain this relationship. However, the rational-self interest, values, and the fairness models were sufficient to explain this relationship.;This author developed two statistical models, the General and the Integrative, to test the relationship between unionized workers' support for foreign aid and their attitudes and beliefs toward foreign aid programs. The General model is a good model to explain the moral advantage and the economic cost or disadvantage of foreign aid, but it is not sufficient to explain workers' perception of waste of U.S. dollars toward foreign aid programs. The Integrative statistical model is sufficient to explain these three main components of workers' support for foreign aid and their relationship to their attitudes and beliefs toward foreign aid programs.;This dissertation provides valuable information regarding the target audience that was not considered before in connection with foreign aid issues. In addition, global policy interdependencies of developed and developing countries as they affect the American worker is an issue that has an enormous importance in today's economies, particularly in the U.S. economy. |
