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Abstract
Citizens' tendency to overestimate the size of immigrant populations has been the subject of several studies over the past three decades. While we have learned a great deal about the extent, causes, and potential consequences of this population innumeracy, our understanding remains static. The current letter offers the first longitudinal consideration of immigrant population size misperceptions with an analysis across a nine-year span in the U.S. This study considers: 1) whether misperceptions have changed over time; 2) how these changes compare to the growth of the actual foreign-born population size; and 3) whether these changes are related to demographic and ideological factors. Results indicate that misperceptions have grown rapidly in the U.S, far outpacing the modest, actual increases across the period. Pooled cross-sectional analyses indicate that demographic factors do not explain the growth in misperceptions. However, the overestimates of politically conservative Americans have grown increasingly extreme over time.
Keywords: immigration; misperceptions; United States; longitudinal analysis; population innumeracy.
Introduction
Ask citizens how many foreigners reside in their country and they will most likely provide an overestimate. This population innumeracy has now been documented in Europe and the U.S. for almost two decades (Hjerm 2007; Semyonov, Raijman, Yom Tov and Schmidt 2004; Semyonov, Raijman and Gorodzeisky 2008; Sides and Citrin 2007; Citrin and Sides 2008).1 Its presence has raised concern among researchers about potential links to xenophobia. Further, anti-immigrant political figures like President Trump or far-right parties throughout Europe may be able to manipulate these misperceptions to gain support. Accordingly, some researchers recommend the widespread dissemination of correct information to counteract the potential consequences of population innumeracy (Alba et al. 2005; Nadeau et al. 1991; Sides and Cirtin 2007; Sigelman and Niemi 2001).
Presently however, our knowledge of this phenomenon is limited because all previous analyses are cross-sectional. It is unknown whether rates of population innumeracy have increased, decreased, or held steady over time. The current letter addresses this gap in the literature by examining misperception patterns longitudinally across three representative U.S. samples. The analysis presents a dynamic examination applying pooled cross-sectional regression to data from the 2005 Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy Survey (CIDS), and the 2009 and 2013 waves of the Transatlantic Trends Survey (TATS). Equal spacing of independent samples across a 9-year span allows...