Measuring Preferences for Income Equality and Income Mobility

Bernardo Lara E. and Kenneth A. Shores
Additional contact information
Bernardo Lara E.: Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
Kenneth A. Shores: University of Delaware

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2024, vol. 106, issue 6, 1542-1557

Abstract: This paper quantifies preferences for income equality and mobility by generating statistics that are uncorrelated with beliefs and can be interpreted as marginal rates of substitution (MRS). All things being equal, U.S. residents are willing to reduce average income by $2,744 to reduce the 90/10 income inequality ratio one unit, and $1,228 to increase income mobility from the bottom quintile one percentage point. Democrats and Independents have similar preferences for both social variables, while Republicans have an MRS that is about two-thirds that of Democrats and Independents for both income inequality and mobility.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01240
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

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:tpr:restat:v:106:y:2024:i:6:p:1542-1557

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().