Are the upwardly mobile more left-wing?

Andrew Eric Clark and Maria Alexandra Cotofan

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: It is well-known that the wealthier are more likely to have Right-leaning political preferences. We here in addition consider the role of the individual's starting position, and in particular their upward social mobility relative to their parents. In 18 waves of UK panel data, both own and parental social status are independently positively associated with Right-leaning voting and political preferences: given their own social status, the upwardly-mobile are therefore more Left-wing. We investigate a number of potential mediators: these results do not reflect the relationship between well-being and own and parents' social status but are rather linked to the individual's beliefs about how fair society is.

Keywords: social mobility; voting; redistribution; satisfaction; fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 C25 D31 D63 J28 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2023-07-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-ltv and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:121296

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