Good Samaritan or Rich Samaritan? Inequality, Development and Redistribution

• In Event: Poster Session: Democracy and Autocracy (II) & Class and Inequality
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Inequality and Attitudes toward Redistribution

Abstract

When do people want redistribution? And when are people more divided over it? Previous studies have focused on the effects of income inequality, economic development and individuals’ household income, but mostly separately and with some mixed results. This article theorises and tests the interactive effects of these three factors. First, support for redistribution is proposed to increase when both development and inequality are high. While inequality increases the need for redistributive policies due to self-interest, development enhances people’s altruism by providing resources and state-capacity required for redistribution. Second, public opinion is expected to be more divided when both inequality and development are low. In these cases, the costs of redistribution go to a broader segment of the population and involve a larger share of their income. The analyses use multilevel models to estimate over-time effects with survey data consisting of 368,619 respondents in 281 surveys from 86 countries over three decades. The results support the hypotheses, showing that support for redistribution is higher in developed unequal countries, and that the difference in preferences between the rich and poor is largest in less affluent equal countries.

Author

• Marco Alexander Pastor Mayo, University of Oxford