Meritocracy Across Borders: Support for Redistribution in Japan and the United States

• In Event: 30620 - Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Migration, Transnationalism, and Inequality

Abstract

One way to rectify economic inequality is for the government to tax the rich and redistribute its money to people in need. To what degree people support redistribution differs depending on which country they live in; hence culture may influence people’s attitudes toward redistribution. In this research, we investigated whether support for redistribution differs between Japan and the United States, and if it does, which theoretical model explains the difference: the economic, institutional, or cultural model. We collected surveys in Japan and the United States using online survey companies. The first data set was collected in 2021 targeting 18-69-year-old individuals, and the second data set was collected in 2023 from the United States and 2024 from Japan targeting 18-39-year-old individuals. The first data include 2,008 Japanese and 2,481 American respondents, and the second data include 1,358 Japanese and 1,896 American respondents after removing the respondents with missing answers.
The results of the first and second analyses suggested that Japanese respondents expressed less supportive attitudes toward redistribution than American respondents. After controlling for the variables that operationalize the economic model, the significance nearly disappeared (1st analysis). However, controlling for the variables that exemplify the institutional and cultural models did not change the impact of a country variable (1st and 2nd analysis). American respondents who thought their lives would be better in 10 years were more supportive of redistribution, but the same pattern was not observed in Japan. American respondents who agreed that hard work is important to get ahead were less supportive of redistribution than those who did not. In contrast, Japanese respondents who agreed were more supportive. The discussion section considers how Japanese and American respondents understand altruism and meritocracy differently, which might be affected by religious beliefs and cultural differences, respectively.

Authors

• Daisuke Ito, Tokyo Metropolitan University

• Makoto Todoroki, Kanazawa University