Voter Ideology, Economic Factors, and State and Local Tax Progressivity

John M. Foster

Public Finance Review, 2013, vol. 41, issue 2, 177-202

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between voter ideology and the distribution of tax burdens across income groups using state and local data, aggregated at the state level, for 1995, 2002, and 2007. I find that average voter liberalism is positively related to subnational tax progressivity. However, the effects are economically insignificant. A state’s ethnic demographic context appears to be more important. The ethnic congruence between the poor and the nonpoor is positively related to progressivity and the effects are economically significant. The tension between ethnic groups, measured with an index of residential segregation, is inversely related to progressivity. The effects are larger in magnitude than those of average voter liberalism. It is possible that the ethnic demographic context reflects aspects of voter preferences that are not captured by measures of voter ideology.

Keywords: ideology; tax progressivity; fiscal federalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142112467528 (text/html)

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:sae:pubfin:v:41:y:2013:i:2:p:177-202

DOI: 10.1177/1091142112467528

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Public Finance Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().