Income Inequality & Approval of National Institutions in the United States

• In Event: Institutions, Inequality, and Policy Action and Inaction

Abstract

Do citizens hold institutions accountable for rising income inequality in society? In this paper, we test a theory arguing that citizens strategically distinguish between their national institutions when assessing which institution to blame for rising inequality by focusing their accountability on the institution primarily responsible for passing policy, the U.S. Congress. Leveraging over (1) 50 years of new quarterly national time-series data and (2) subnational (i.e, state and congressional district) time-series cross-sectional data, we find that increases in income inequality lowers approval of the U.S. Congress but not the presidency or the Supreme Court. We replicate this finding of strategic accountability using zip-code geocoded panel data, finding that local inequality increases corresponds to only lower congressional approval. Lastly, using four unique modules fielded in the 2016-2019 Cooperative Election Study we find support for a proposed mechanism by showing that greater salience of an income inequality as a policy issue correlates with lower job approval for Congress but not the other two national institutions. Taken together, our results suggest citizens differentiate between their national institutions when assessing accountability for policy failures, with blame falling squarely with the Article One branch prominently responsible for policymaking.

Authors

• Carlos Algara, Claremont Graduate University

• Byengseon Bae, Claremont Graduate University