Replication Data for: Feeling ill: perspective-taking and attitudes toward healthcare access for undocumented immigrants.

Despite the need, millions of undocumented immigrants in the US remain excluded from government-funded health insurance. Past attempts to expand eligibility to include undocumented immigrants have faced opposition from the public and policymakers. Using a set of survey experiments, I find evidence that taking the perspective of an ill undocumented immigrant increases perceptions of them as deserving of government healthcare and support for policies that expand access. The effects were consistent among Democrats and Republicans. I also leverage the spread of COVID-19 to compare imagined perspective-taking with lived experience. The results showed that individuals with COVID-19 lived experience had the greatest support for undocumented immigrants' access to healthcare. Nevertheless, the perspective-taking treatment produced attitudes that approximated those of lived experience. This paper provides evidence that shared experiences - imagined or lived - can increase support for granting undocumented immigrants access to government-funded health insurance programs.