Income Distributions and the Relative Representation of Rich and Poor Citizens

• In Event: Unequal Responsiveness in Advanced Democracies

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the impact of the income distributions in different countries on the representation of preferences for more or less government spending in different policy domains. We show that the more right-skewed the income distribution, meaning the more incomes in the upper half of the distribution are spread out compared to those in the lower half, the closer the preferences of middle-income citizens are to those of the poor relative to those of the rich. Since policies are more likely to be implemented by governments the more citizens support them, the poor are advantaged relative to the rich when the income distribution is more right-skewed. We use survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), income distribution data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and government spending data from the OECD and the World Bank.

Authors

• Mikael Persson, University of Gothenburg

• Eric Guntermann, University of California, Berkeley