Don’t stop believin’: Income group heterogeneity in updating of social mobility beliefs

Anna Schwarz and Philipp Warum

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2024, vol. 225, issue C, 1-19

Abstract: This article presents a novel explanation for why demand for redistribution may not respond to information on low intergenerational mobility on average. Conducting a survey experiment in Austria, we show that the average treatment effect on perceptions is mostly driven by high-income individuals while low-income individuals hardly react. Using data from two related survey experiments, we document similar heterogeneity in Germany, the United States, Italy, and Sweden, while France and the United Kingdom appear to exhibit different dynamics. The low-income group, which has the strongest incentive to increase demand for redistribution, makes few adjustments to its beliefs. This may explain the frequently observed persistence of redistributive preferences. We observe that demand for redistribution remains unchanged on average and across income groups in the five countries with differential belief updating by income. Conversely, a more substantial increase in demand for redistribution seems to occur in France, where all income groups update their beliefs similarly. Further, we provide suggestive evidence that low-income individuals update their beliefs more in less ego-relevant contexts, indicating motivated beliefs.

Keywords: Intergenerational mobility; Beliefs; Survey experiment; Redistributive preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D63 D83 H23 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124002476
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:jeborg:v:225:y:2024:i:c:p:1-19

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.06.029

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().