Social Mobility Perceptions and Inequality Acceptance

Arbeitspapier

This paper examines how perceptions of social mobility affect distributional preferences. We conduct a randomized information intervention in a large and heterogeneous sample of Germans to manipulate beliefs about social mobility. While the information treatment renders perceptions significantly more pessimistic, it changes neither revealed distributional preferences nor support for redistribution or education spending. The large sample size allows us to rule out economically meaningful treatment effects. One reason for this result seems to be that respondents do not link low mobility rates to the role of luck and inequality of opportunity.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Papers in Economics and Statistics ; No. 2020-02

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Field Experiments ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies ; Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies; includes inheritance and gift taxes ; Public Goods
• Subject: Social mobility ; distributional preferences ; inequality ; survey experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Fehr, Dietmar ; Müller, Daniel ; Preuß, Marcel
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
• (where): Innsbruck
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/238226
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET