Preferences for Redistribution in the Land of Opportunities

Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara

No 178, Working Papers from IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University

Abstract: The poor favor redistribution and the rich oppose it, but that is not all. The "prospect of upward mobility" (POUM) hypothesis implies that social mobility may make some of today's poor into tomorrow's rich and since redistributive policies do not change often, individual preferences for redistribution should depend on the extent and the nature of social mobility. We estimate the determinants of preferences for redistribution using individual level data from the US, and we find that individual support for redistribution is negatively affected by the likelihood of moving above mean income relative to moving below the mean. Furthermore, people who believe that the American society offers equal opportunities to all oppose redistribution; instead those who do not believe that equal opportunities really exist and, therefore, regard the upward mobility process as biased, do not see social mobility as an alternative to redistributive policies.

References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (571)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.unibocconi.it/igier/igi/wp/2000/178.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities (2005)
Working Paper: Preferences for Redistribution in the Land of Opportunities (2005)
Working Paper: Preferences for Redistribution in the Land of Opportunities (2002)
Working Paper: Preferences for Redistribution in the Land of Opportunities (2001)
Working Paper: Preferences for Redistribution in the Land of Opportunities (2001)
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:igi:igierp:178

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://repec.unibocconi.it/igier/igi/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University via Rontgen, 1 - 20136 Milano (Italy).
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().