Social Mobility Perceptions and Inequality Acceptance

Dietmar Fehr, Daniel Müller and Marcel Preuss ()

Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck

Abstract: This paper examines how perceptions of social mobility affect distributional preferences. We conduct a randomized information intervention in a large and heterogeneous sample of Germans to manipulate beliefs about social mobility. While the information treatment renders perceptions significantly more pessimistic, it changes neither revealed distributional preferences nor support for redistribution or education spending. The large sample size allows us to rule out economically meaningful treatment effects. One reason for this result seems to be that respondents do not link low mobility rates to the role of luck and inequality of opportunity.

Keywords: Social mobility; distributional preferences; inequality; survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D31 H23 H24 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Social mobility perceptions and inequality acceptance (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inn:wpaper:2020-02

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