Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Alesina, Alberto; Stantcheva, Stefanie; Teso, Edoardo
• 署名单位: Harvard University; Bocconi University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Harvard University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20162015
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 521-554
• 关键词: social-mobility; income mobility; sweden; opportunity; US; perceptions; POLITICS; QUINTILE; LAND; time

摘要

Using new cross-country survey and experimental data, we investigate how beliefs about intergenerational mobility affect preferences for redistribution in France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Americans are more optimistic than Europeans about social mobility. Our randomized treatment shows pessimistic information about mobility and increases support for redistribution, mostly for equality af opportunity policies. We find strong political polarization, Left-wing respondents are more pessimistic about mobility: their preferences for redistribution are correlated with their mobility perceptions: and they support more redistribution after seeing pessimistic information. None of this is true for right-wing respondents, possibly because they see the government as a problem and not as the solution.