Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution

Stefanie Stantcheva, Alberto Alesina and Edoardo Teso

No 11738, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Using newly collected cross-country survey and experimental data, we investigate how beliefs about intergenerational mobility affect preferences for redistribution in five countries: France, Italy, Sweden, U.K., and U.S.. Americans are more optimistic than Europeans about intergenerational mobility, and too optimistic relative to actual mobility. Our randomized treatment that shows respondents pessimistic information about mobility increases support for redistribution, mostly for equality of opportunity policies. A strong political polarization exists: Left-wing respondents are more pessimistic about intergenerational mobility, their preferences for redistribution are correlated with their mobility perceptions, and they respond to pessimistic information by increasing support for redistribution. None of these apply to right-wing respondents, possibly because of their extremely negative views of government.

Keywords: Redistribution; Intergenerational mobility; Taxation; Online experiment; Fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D72 H21 H23 H24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11738 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution (2018)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution (2017)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11738

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11738

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().