Moving on up: The impact of income mobility on antisocial behaviour

Lata Gangadharan (), Philip Grossman and Joe Vecci

European Economic Review, 2021, vol. 134, issue C

Abstract: While the causes for upward income mobility receive considerable attention, the behavioural impact of the prospect of income mobility has been largely overlooked. We design an experiment and a survey to investigate if the prospect of income mobility influences antisocial behaviour. In the experiment, subjects can, at a cost, reduce others’ payoffs and low-income subjects can move up the income distribution. We find that antisocial behaviour occurs more frequently when mobility is not possible. High-income subjects benefit most from the prospect of upward mobility as they are less likely to encounter antisocial behaviour relative to the immobility setting. Mobility by means of effort has lower rates of antisocial behaviour relative to mobility through luck. This is particularly true for low-income individuals who are less likely to engage in antisocial behaviour when mobility occurs through effort. A large majority of survey respondents believe that mobility will decrease antisocial behaviour, predominantly because an environment where it is possible to move up is considered fairer.

Keywords: Income inequality; Prospect of upward mobility (POUM); Antisocial behaviour; Experiment; Survey; Luck versus effort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292121000398
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Moving on up: The impact of income mobility on antisocial behaviour (2019)
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:eee:eecrev:v:134:y:2021:i:c:s0014292121000398

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103686

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().