Income Misperception and Populism

Thilo N. H. Albers (), Felix Kersting () and Fabian Kosse ()
Additional contact information
Thilo N. H. Albers: Humboldt University Berlin
Felix Kersting: Humboldt University Berlin
Fabian Kosse: University of Würzburg

No 15673, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We propose that false beliefs about the own current economic status are an important factor for explaining populist attitudes. Along with the subjects' receptiveness to right-wing populism, we elicit their perceived relative income positions in a representative survey of German households. We find that people with pessimistic beliefs about their income position are more attuned to populist statements. Key to understanding the misperception-populism relationship are strong gender differences in the mechanism: Misperception triggers income dissatisfaction for both men and women, but the former are much more likely to channel their discontent into affection for populist ideas.

Keywords: perception; income; populism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D72 D91 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2022-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15673.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp15673

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().