Inequality, Public Opinion, and Redistribution

Leslie McCall () and Lane Kenworthy ()

No 459, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: According to the ""median-voter"" hypothesis, greater inequality in the market distribution of earnings or income tends to produce greater generosity in redistributive policy. We outline the steps in the causal chain specified by the hypothesis and attempt to assess these steps empirically. Prior studies focusing on cross-country variation have found little support for the median-voter model. We examine over-time trends in eight nations during the 1980s and 1990s. Here too the median-voter hypothesis appears to have little utility.

Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2007-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Published in Socio-Economic Review 6: 35-68

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/459.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:lis:liswps:459

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Piotr Paradowski ().