We argue that tax policy typically does not respond to inequality because many voters hold equal treatment fairness beliefs for which the expectation is that, just as all have one vote, the state should treat citizens equally on other dimensions of policy. In the tax domain, this means all should pay the same rate. We propose a new survey instrument to measure equal treatment beliefs and implement it in surveys in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We document in all three countries a robust negative partial correlation between the strength of individual equal treatment beliefs and preferences for higher taxes on the rich. We also present results from a survey experiment in the United States that exposes respondents to a violation of equal treatment beliefs—voting weighted by educational attainment. Exposure to this treatment both increases the strength of equal treatment beliefs and decreases support for progressive taxation.
AlesinaA.GiulianoP.BenhabibJ (2011). Preferences for redistribution. In BisinA. (Ed.), Handbook of social economics (pp. 93–132). North Holland.
3.
AlesinaA.GlaeserE. (2004). Fighting poverty in the US and Europe: A world of difference. Oxford University Press.
4.
AtkinsonA.PikettyT. (2007). Top incomes over the twentieth century (Volume 1). Oxford University Press.
5.
AtkinsonA.PikettyT. (2010). Top incomes over the twentieth century (Volume 2). Oxford University Press.
6.
Ballard-RosaC.MartinL.ScheveK. (2017). The structure of American income tax policy preferences. Journal of Politics, 79(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1086/687324
7.
BartelsL. (2005). Homer gets a tax cut: Inequality and public policy in the American mind. Perspectives on Politics, 3(01), 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592705050036
8.
BartelsL. (2008). Unequal democracy. Princeton University Press.
9.
BechtelM.LieschR.ScheveK. (2018). Inequality and redistribution behavior in a give-or-take game. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(14), 3611–3616. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1720457115
BoudreauC.MacKenzieS. (2018). Wanting what is fair: How party cues and information about income inequality affect public support for taxes. Journal of Politics, 80(2), 367–381. https://doi.org/10.1086/694784
12.
CavailleC.TrumpK. (2015). The two facets of social policy preferences. The Journal of Politics, 77(1), 146–160. https://doi.org/10.1086/678312
13.
DimickM.RuedaD.StegmuellerD. (2016). The Altruistic rich? Inequality and other-regarding preferences for redistribution. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 11(4), 385–439. https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00015099
14.
DuranteR.PuttermanL.van der WeeleJ. (2014). Preferences for redistribution and perception of fairness: An experimental study. Journal of the European Economic Association, 12(4), 1059–1086. https://doi.org/10.1111/jeea.12082
15.
FismanR.JakielaP.KarivS. (2014). The distributional preferences of Americans. NBER Working Paper no. 20145. https://www.nber.org/papers/w20145
FriedB. (2002). Why proportionate taxation? In ThorndikeJ.VentryD. (Eds.), Tax justice: The ongoing debate. Urban Institute.
18.
GilensM. (1999). Why Americans hate welfare: race, media, and the politics of anti-poverty policy. University of Chicago Press.
19.
GilensM. (2012). Affluence and influence: Economic inequality and political power in America. Princeton University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation.
20.
GilensM.ThalA. (2018). Doing well and doing good? How concern for others shapes policy preferences and partisanship among affluent Americans. Public Opinion Quarterly, 82(2), 209–230. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfy020
GrangerC. (1969). Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods. Econometrica, 37(3), 424–438. https://doi.org/10.2307/1912791
23.
GuicciardiniF. (1520; 1867). la decima scalata. In Opere Inedite di Francesco Guicciardini: Ricordi Autobiografici E di Famiglia E Scritti Vari (pp. 353–368). Cellini.
24.
HackerJ.S.PiersonP. (2011). Winner-take-all politics: How Washington made the rich richer and turned its back on the middle class. Simon and Schuster.
25.
HallR.RabushkaA. (1981). The flat tax. Hoover Institution.
26.
HannityS. (2003). Let freedom ring: Winning the war of liberty over liberalism. Thorndike Press.
27.
HochschildJ. (1981). What’s Fair?Harvard University Press.
28.
KuziemkoI.NortonM.SaezE.StantchevaS. (2013). How elastic are preferences for redistribution? Evidence from randomized survey experiments. American Economic Review.
29.
LimbergJ. (2019). What’s fair? Preferences for tax progressivity in the wake of the financial crisis. Journal of Public Policy, 40(2), 171–193. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X18000430
30.
LupuN.PontussonJ. (2011). The structure of inequality and the politics of redistribution. American Political Science Review, 105(2May), 316–336. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055411000128
31.
LuttmerE. (2001). Group loyalty and the taste for redistribution. Journal of Political Economy, 109(3), 500–528. https://doi.org/10.1086/321019
32.
McCallL. (2013). The undeserving rich: Beliefs about inequality, opportunity, and redistribution in American society. Cambridge University Press.
33.
McCallL.KenworthyL. (2009). Americans’ social policy preferences in the era of rising inequality. Perspectives on Politics, 7(3), 459–484. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592709990818
34.
PageB.JacobsL. (2009). Class war? What American really think about economic inequality. University of Chicago Press.
35.
PikettyT. (1995). Social mobility and redistributive politics. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110(3), 551–584. https://doi.org/10.2307/2946692
36.
RoemerJ. (1998). Equality of opportunity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
37.
RoineJ.WaldenstromD. (2015). Long-run trends in the distribution of income and wealth. Handbook of Income Distribution.
38.
ScheveK.StasavageD. (2012). Democracy, war, and wealth: Lessons from two centuries of inheritance taxation. American Political Science Review, 106(1), 81–102. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055411000517
39.
ScheveK.StasavageD. (2016). Taxing the rich: A history of fiscal fairness in the United States and Europe. Princeton University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation.
40.
ShayoM. (2009). A model of social identity with an application to political economy: Nation, class, and redistribution. American Political Science Review, 103(2), 147–174. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055409090194
41.
StantchevaS. (2020). Understanding tax policy: How do people reason?NBER Working Paper 27699.
WeinzierlM. (2017). Popular acceptance of inequality due to brute luck and support for classical benefit-based taxation. Journal of Public Economics, 155, 54–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.09.007
ZallerJ. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge University Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
