Global Evidence on Misperceptions and Preferences for Redistribution

Arbeitspapier

Individuals often hold erroneous beliefs about their socio-economic status relative to others. We develop a new machine learning technique to measure these misperceptions and use large-scale international survey data to compute status misperception for 241,757 households from 97 countries (24 OECD, 73 non-OECD). We show that status misperception is a widespread phenomenon across the globe. Upward-biased perceptions are associated with lower preferences for redistribution and have direct consequences for welfare provision via the tax and transfer system. The effect accounts for approximately 9% of the variation in redistribution preferences, is independent of socio-demographic characteristics, robust to measurement errors in social surveys, and occurs similary when we change the underlying micro data or examine party preferences.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 9381

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; National Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs ; Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: General ; Index Numbers and Aggregation; Leading indicators
• Thema: misperceptions ; machine learning ; socio-economic status ; preferences ; redistribution ; welfare provision ; taxes and transfers

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Feichtmayer, Jennifer Elena ; Gründler, Klaus
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (wo): Munich
• (wann): 2021

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/248926
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ