Privilege Is Multidimensional: Status and Redistribution

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

Abstract

Many low-income voters around the world are reluctant to accept handouts from the state, even against apparent self interest. Existing theories around preferences for redistribution explain this through explanations such as last place aversion theory and racial bias. In this paper, I use survey data from India and the United States to advance an alternative intriguing explanation for this behavior in high inequality,socially stratified contexts, that brings together these contrasting explanations by making the theoretical and empirical case for viewing redistributive preferences through the lens of overall individual status. First, I theorize a conception of individual status as being rooted in multiple dimensions of social and economic identity, and devise a novel quantitative measure to get at individual status from observational survey data. I then show that this cumulative measure of status influences not only the preferences and attitudes towards redistribution, but also induces a higher self-perception on the income distribution scale for those who are higher on other measures of status across both Indian and American survey data. I also test for individualistic, meritocratic and redistributive attitudes, theorizing and showing how privilege derived from status influences these attitudes. This paper contributes to the rich literature on preferences for redistribution, status and perceptions of income distribution, illuminating the link between identity and political attitudes.

Author

• Ritika Goel, University of California, Berkeley