Headwinds, Tailwinds, and Preferences for Income Redistribution

Abstract

Objective This study examines how preferences for income redistribution respond to information that points to the degree to which bad luck causes poverty and good luck causes wealth. Methods Survey respondents saw a vignette that described why someone is poor or a vignette that described why someone is wealthy; poverty and wealth were products of effort, various mixtures of effort and luck, one dimension of luck, or two dimensions of luck. Results Overall trends in the data show that redistribution is viewed more favorably as luck becomes marginally more important in causing both poverty and wealth. Pairwise comparisons of specific treatments show that responses to how degrees of bad luck cause poverty are more uniform and predictable than responses to how degrees of good luck cause wealth. Conclusion Redistributive preferences may be more malleable with respect to information that points to how bad luck contributes to poverty.

Are All Politics National?: County-Level Social Contexts and Inequality Remediation Attitudes, 2006-2012

“…Some relatively recent experimental research offers evidence to suggest that exposure to inequality may shape their thinking about the issues in various ways (Chavanne 2018;Heiserman and Simpson 2017;McCall et al 2017;Sands 2017). McCall et al (2017), for example, found that introducing people to information about growing inequality made them more likely to attribute success and failure to structural explanations.…”

“…Similarly, high levels of segregation by race and social class may skew how Americans perceive inequality, as they are often surrounded by those who share their outlooks and social position in life. Recent experimental work provides suggestive evidence that social context shapes individuals' perceptions about whether inequality should be reduced (Chavanne 2018; Heiserman and Simpson 2017;McCall et al 2017;Sands 2017). Other evidence suggests that higher inequality in US states associated with a reduced sense of financial satisfaction (Hastings 2019).…”

Are All Politics National? County-Level Social Contexts and Inequality Remediation Attitudes, 2006 to 2012

“…Similarly, high levels of segregation by race and social class may skew how Americans perceive inequality, as they are often surrounded by those who share their outlooks and social position in life. Recent experimental work provides suggestive evidence that social context shapes individuals’ perceptions about whether inequality should be reduced (Chavanne 2018; Heiserman and Simpson 2017; McCall et al 2017; Sands 2017). Other evidence suggests that higher inequality in U.S. states is associated with a reduced sense of financial satisfaction (Hastings 2019).…”

Debt perceptions: fairness judgments of debt relief for individuals and countries

“…The study manipulates debtor and lender responsibility for two reasons. First, vignette-based studies have found that preferences for redistribution are stronger (weaker) when respondents perceive that one's situation is within (beyond) one's control (Schokkaert & Overlaet, 1989;Schokkaert & Capeau, 1991;Konow, 1996Konow, , 2001Konow, , 2003Konow, , 2009Faravelli, 2007;Chavanne, 2016Chavanne, , 2018. Additionally, large-scale national or international surveys show a robust relationship between preferences for redistributive policies and perceptions that life situations are products of effort or luck (Fong, 2001;Alesina & La Ferrara, 2005;Boarini & Le Clainche, 2009).…”

“…Although the present study and the study described by Chavanne (2017) are the first attempts to analyze public perceptions of debt relief using vignettes, the method used in these studies is commonly used in social science research to examine how judgments respond to changes in social context. In addition to the work cited above involving vignette-based studies of the effect of responsibility on redistributive preferences (Schokkaert & Overlaet, 1989;Schokkaert & Capeau, 1991;Konow, 1996Konow, , 2001Konow, , 2003Konow, , 2009Faravelli, 2007;Gaertner & Schokkaert, 2012;Chavanne, 2016Chavanne, , 2018, vignettes have been used to study topics that include, but are not limited to, how fairness judgments respond to price and wage increases (Kahneman et al, 1986), to alternative resource distributions (Yaari & Bar-Hillel, 1984), to changes in causation and culpability (Alicke, 1992;Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009;Alicke et al, 2011), to changes in criminal sentencing severity (Robinson & Darley, 1995;Carlsmith et al, 2002;Robinson & Kurzban, 2006) and to different degrees of deception (Gneezy, 2005).…”