Inequality aversion predicts support for public and private redistribution

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Epper, Thomas F.; Fehr, Ernst; Kreiner, Claus Thustrup; Leth-Petersen, Soren; Olufsen, Isabel Skak; Skov, Peer Ebbesen
• 署名单位: Universite de Lille; IESEG School of Management; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); CNRS - Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences (INSHS); University of Copenhagen; University of Zurich; Auckland University of Technology
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-13216
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401445121
• 发表日期: 2024-09-24
• 关键词: social preferences; experimental decisions; UNITED-STATES; income; mobility; TRENDS; field

摘要

Rising inequality has brought redistribution back on the political agenda. In theory, inequality aversion drives people's support for redistribution. People can dislike both advantageous inequality (comparison relative to those worse off) and disadvantageous inequality (comparison relative to those better off). Existing experimental evidence reveals substantial variation across people in these preferences. However, evidence is scarce on the broader role of these two distinct forms of inequality aversion for redistribution in society. We provide evidence by exploiting a unique combination of data. We use an incentivized experiment to measure inequality aversion in a large population sample (approximate to 9,000 among 20- to 64-y-old Danes). We link the elicited inequality aversion to survey information on individuals' support for public redistribution (policies that reduce income differences) and administrative records revealing their private redistribution (real-life donations to charity). In addition, the link to administrative data enables us to include a large battery of controls in the empirical analysis. Theory predicts that support for public redistribution increases with both types of inequality aversion, while private redistribution should increase with advantageous inequality aversion, but decrease with disadvantageous inequality aversion. A strong dislike for disadvantageous inequality makes people willing to sacrifice own income to reduce the income of people who are better off, thereby reducing the distance to people with more income than themselves. Public redistribution schemes achieve this but private donations to charity do not. Our empirical results provide strong support for these predictions and with quantitatively large effects compared to other predictors.