Financial Literacy and Attitudes to Redistribution

Alberto Montagnoli (), Mirko Moro, Georgios Panos () and Robert Wright ()

No 10633, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This study combines novel financial-literacy data with measures of attitudes to redistribution from the British Election Study. We find a significant negative relationship between financial literacy and attitudes in favour of government intervention for income redistribution. The effect is robust to several specifications, samples, longitudinal models and instrumental variable regressions. Falsification tests show that these results are independent of generic attitudes towards other types of inequality/discrimination, e.g. based on gender, race or sexual orientation. An inquiry into the mechanisms of the effect indicates that the homo oeconomicus effect does not exert an impact on attitudes to redistribution for the less financially literate.

Keywords: financial literacy; redistribution; inequality; attitudes; Great Britain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 D31 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Financial Literacy and Attitudes to Redistribution (2017)
Working Paper: Financial Literacy and Attitudes to Redistribution (2017)
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