Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners

Nattavudh Powdthavee and Andrew Oswald

No 16, PIER Discussion Papers from Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: The causes of people's political attitudes are largely unknown. We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing people before and after a lottery windfall, we show that winners tend to switch towards support for a right-wing political party and to become less egalitarian. The larger the win, the more people tilt to the right. This relationship is robust to (i) different ways of defining right-wing, (ii) a variety of estimation methods, and (iii) methods that condition on the person previously having voted left. It is strongest for males. Our findings are consistent with the view that voting is driven partly by human self-interest. Money apparently makes people more right-wing.

Keywords: Voting; Gender; Lottery wins; Political preferences; Income; Attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 D72 H1 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2016-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners (2014)
Working Paper: Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners (2014)
Working Paper: Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners (2014)
Working Paper: Does Money Make People Right-Wing and Inegalitarian? A Longitudinal Study of Lottery Winners (2014)
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