The authors argue that inequality matters for redistributive politics in advanced capitalist societies, but it is the structure of inequality, not the level of inequality that matters, and they test this proposition with data from 15 to 18 advanced democracies and find that both redistribution and none-lderly social spending increase as the dispersion of earnings in the upper half of the distribution increases relative to the distribution in the lower half.
Abstract:
Against the current consensus among comparative political economists, we argue that inequality matters for redistributive politics in advanced capitalist societies, but it is the structure of inequality, not the level of inequality, that matters. Our theory posits that middle-income voters will be inclined to ally with low-income voters and support redistributive policies when the distance between the middle and the poor is small relative to the distance between the middle and the rich. We test this proposition with data from 15 to 18 advanced democracies and find that both redistribution and nonelderly social spending increase as the dispersion of earnings in the upper half of the distribution increases relative to the dispersion of earnings in the lower half of the distribution. In addition, we present survey evidence on preferences for redistribution among middle-income voters that is consistent with our theory and regression results indicating that the left parties are more likely to participate in government when the structure of inequality is characterized by skew.
TL;DR: The authors formalizes the prospect of upward mobility hypothesis by explicitly modeling the voters' beliefs about their prospective incomes and show that when belief formation and voting are strategic, the poor will form overly optimistic beliefs and vote for low taxes if the value of anticipation is high enough and if their optimism does not cause too drastic a change in tax policy.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the mechanism behind the literature's finding that living close to poor individuals of another ethnicity decreases support for income redistribution, and they employed a laboratory experiment to extract causal relationships for some of the plausible forces at play.
TL;DR: In this paper, the influence of individual income and country-level inequality on values about distributive justice was explored, and the authors concluded that altruism is an important factor driving preferences for redistribution.
TL;DR: This paper found that less-affluent individuals are more likely to prioritize cuts to social spending over tax increases, at higher levels of conspicuous consumption, while more affluent individuals prioritize tax increases over social spending.
TL;DR: This is the essential companion to Jeffrey Wooldridge's widely-used graduate text Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data (MIT Press, 2001).
TL;DR: The homophily principle as mentioned in this paper states that similarity breeds connection, and that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics.
TL;DR: In this paper, a self-categorization theory is proposed to discover the social group and the importance of social categories in the analysis of social influence, and the Salience of social Categories is discussed.
TL;DR: The Im-Pesaran-Shin (IPS) test as discussed by the authors relaxes the restrictive assumption of the LL test and is best viewed as a test for summarizing the evidence from independent tests of the sample hypothesis.
Q1. What have the authors contributed in "The structure of inequality and the politics of redistribution" ?
In addition, the authors present survey evidence on preferences for redistribution among middle-income voters that is consistent with their theory and regression results indicating that the left parties are more likely to participate in government when the structure of inequality is characterized by skew.
Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "The structure of inequality and the politics of redistribution" ?
One hypothesis to be explored in future work is that center-right parties adjust strategically to the advantages that center-left parties enjoy when the structure of inequality is skewed, pursuing more redistributive policies. Although the authors do not believe that governments are exclusively responsive to the policy preferences of middle-income voters, it seems reasonable to suppose that middle-income voters play a pivotal role in coalitional politics. Their preliminary analysis of survey data suggests that the structure of inequality shapes the preferences of middle-income voters and that these preferences in turn impact government policy. Further analysis of individual preferences constitutes an obvious next step that the authors intend to pursue.
Q3. In what countries did the OECD find the skew of earnings in the U.?
In several of these countries—notably, Australia, France, Ireland, and Switzerland—government policy appears to have become more redistributive relative to countries in which earnings skew has remained stable.
Q4. What is the likely explanation for the structure of earnings inequality?
As Piketty and Saez (2003) suggest, the rapid growth of corporate compensation, linked to the dynamics of equity markets, constitutes yet another possible factor behind changes in the structure of earnings inequality over the past two decades.
Q5. Does the addition of government partisanship affect the estimated effects of skew?
With redistribution as the dependent variable, introducing government partisanship into their models does not noticeably alter the estimated effects of skew.
Q6. What is the reason for the decline in relative income mobility?
A number of recent crossnational studies indicate that relative income mobility tends to decline with aggregate inequality (Aaberge et al.
Q7. What is the reason why middle-income voters empathize with the poor?
In particular, the authors expect middleincome voters to empathize with the poor (or affluent) to the extent that they live in the same neighborhoods, send their children to the same schools, and circulate within the same social networks (McPherson, SmithLovin, and Cook 2001).