Preferences for Redistribution

By A. Alesina, Paola Giuliano. Social Science Research Network, 2009

1,034 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper discusses what determines the preferences of individuals for redistribution. We review the theoretical literature and provide a framework to incorporate various effects previously studied separately in the literature. We then examine empirical evidence for the US, using the General Social Survey, and for a large set of countries, using the World Values Survey. The paper reviews previously found results and provides several new ones. We emphasize, in particular, the role of historical experiences, cultural factors and personal history as determinants of preferences for equality or tolerance for inequality.

Subfields: Gender Studies, General Health Professions, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/81c0d460a9b716c8e750ff2d6798f1eaee797458

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Citations in the corpus

The French Unhappiness Puzzle: The Cultural Dimension of Happiness (2014, methodology): “Other papers have used migrations flows in order to elicit cultural persistence: Guiso et al. (2006) and Alesina and Giuliano (2011) have shown that country-of-ancestry fixed-effects are significant determinants of preferences for redistribution in the United States.”
Experienced inequality and preferences for redistribution (2018, background): “3 and Singhal, 2011; Alesina and Giuliano, 2010), political regimes (Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007; Pan and Xu, 2015), relative income (Karadja et al., 2017; Cruces et al., 2013), reference points (Charité et al., 2015), beliefs about intergenerational mobility (Alesina et al., 2017), beliefs…”
The Demand for Social Insurance: Does Culture Matter? (2011, positive): “Previous papers investigating the role of culture for the support of redistributive policies are Luttmer and Singhal (2008) and Alesina and Giuliano (2009), who document a strong impact on immigrants’ preferences for redistribution by the corresponding average preferences of origin countries that is”
Inequality and Happiness (2012, neutral): “1 See Alesina and Giuliano (2009) for an excellent review of the literature on preferences for redistribution.”
Attitudes to Income Inequality: Experimental and Survey Evidence (2014, background): “27 The survey in Alesina and Giuliano (2010) emphasises the role of the past in general, both the individual’s own past and the country’s history.”
Explaining Social Policy Preferences: Evidence from the Great Recession (2013, background): “A stronger belief that economic hardships are due to one’s own doings may lead to lesser sympathy to the plight of the downtrodden, and consequently reduce support for redistributive policies (Alesina and Giuliano 2010; Alesina and Glaeser 2004).”
Richer (and Holier) Than Thou? The Effect of Relative Income Improvements on Demand for Redistribution (2017, methodology): “Details about the left-right scale in Swedish politics can be found in Petersson (1994), Pettersson-Lidbom (2008), and Oscarsson and Holmberg, 2013 (see also Alesina et al., 1997, for a comparison of the Swedish left-right scale to the American setting). The parties included in Right are Moderata Sa”
How Can Safety Nets Contribute to Economic Growth? (2013, background): “Alesina and Giuliano (2010) present theoretical models of the preference for redistribution as well as data from the World Values Survey that document inter-country differences in this preference, with Eastern Europe and Latin America have higher than average preference.”
Progressive taxation and tax morale (2011, neutral): “Alesina and Giuliano (2011) provide an extensive review of the existing literature.”
ETHNIC DIVERSITY, PUBLIC SPENDING, AND INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT FOR THE WELFARE STATE: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE (2013, neutral): “See for instance Piketty (1995), Ravallion and Lokshin (2000), Bénabou and Ok (2001), Corneo (2001), Corneo and Grüner (2000, 2002), Senik (2004, 2006, 2008), Alesina and La Ferrara (2005b), and the surveys by Borck (2007) and by Alesina and Giuliano (2009).”
Immigration and Redistribution (2018, neutral): “Consistent with this bias in views and over-estimation of the share of freeloaders, Alesina et al. (2011) find using the General Social Survey that white respondents are much less favorable to redistribution than white ones, even after controlling for a range of individual socio-economic…”
Biased Perceptions of Income Distribution and Preferences for Redistribution: Evidence from a Survey Experiment (2012, background): “Studying the effect of distributional misperceptions on political attitudes poses a significant identification challenge, since preferences for redistribution are significantly correlated with income levels (Alesina and Giuliano, 2009), which are in turn closely linked to an individual’s perceived p”