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As income inequality increases worldwide and the role of governments in redistribution becomes increasingly important, governments are seeking to understand citizens' redistribution attitudes. With this in mind, this study analyzes the relationship between citizens' redistribution attitudes and trust in government using data from the fourth (2014–2016) and fifth (2018–2021) waves of the Asian Barometer Survey (15 countries and 37,305 samples). Additionally, we focus on individualism, a key element of global cultural change that has greatly influenced Asian regions, and investigate how individualistic attitudes moderate these relationships. Our results indicate that high government trust is associated with high redistributive preferences among citizens. However, individualistic attitudes lower redistributive preferences at any level of government trust. These findings suggest that the government must consider cultural traits, particularly the prevalence of individualistic attitudes in society and citizens' trust in the government, to successfully implement redistributive policies.

This paper examines white Americans’ attitudes toward redistribution in the United States. Prior research has identified key predictors of redistribution attitudes, including political ideology, racial prejudice, or resentment. In addition to these factors, a growing body of work highlights the role of perceived status threat. Our study builds on the status threat literature by investigating the impact of racialized loser perceptions on opinions towards redistribution. We rely on evidence from an original survey experiment conducted in the United States in 2019. Specifically, we find that whites who perceive themselves to be on the losing side of politics are more likely to oppose government involvement in redistribution, but only when the comparison to non-whites is made explicit. The effects of racialized loser perceptions are robust to controls for previously identified predictors such as ideology, racial attitudes, and party affiliation. We discuss the implications of our results for the rise of support for right-wing populist movements that champion white protectionism. Our paper contributes to past research by testing the effect of cross-racial comparisons on changes in support for redistribution and demonstrates that even subtle changes in the way the comparison is framed can boost white Americans’ anti-egalitarian positions on redistribution.

How tightly linked are the strength of a country’s welfare state and its residents’ support for income redistribution? Multilevel model results (with appropriate controls) show that the publics of strong welfare states recognize their egalitarian income distributions, i.e., the stronger the welfare state, the less the actual and perceived inequality; but they do not differ from their peers in liberal welfare states/market-oriented societies in their preferences for equality. Thus, desire for redistribution bears little overall relationship to welfare state activity. However, further investigation shows a stronger relationship under the surface: Poor people’s support for redistribution is nearly constant across levels of welfarism. By contrast, the stronger the welfare state, the less the support for redistribution among the prosperous, perhaps signaling “harvest fatigue” due to paying high taxes and longstanding egalitarian policies. Our findings are not consistent with structuralist/materialist theory, nor with simple dominant ideology or system justification arguments, but are partially consistent with a legitimate framing hypothesis, with an atomistic self-interest hypothesis, with a reference group solidarity hypothesis, and with the “me-and-mine” hypothesis incorporating sociotropic and egotropic elements. Database: the World Inequality Study: 30 countries, 71 surveys, and over 88,0000 individuals.

Do the rich become more or less supportive of redistribution when exposed to poor people in their local surroundings? Most existing observational studies find that exposure to poor individuals is positively associated with support for redistribution among the well-off, but one prominent field experiment found a negative link. We seek to resolve these divergent findings by employing a design closer to the studies that have found a positive link, but with more causal leverage than these; specifically, a three-wave panel survey linked with fine-grained registry data on local income composition in Denmark. In within-individual models, increased exposure to poor individuals is associated with lower support for redistribution among wealthy individuals. By contrast, between-individual models yield a positive relationship, thus indicating that self-selection based on stable individual characteristics likely explains the predominant finding in previous work.

Economic inequality negatively impacts the welfare in our societies, yet there is reluctance to support measures aimed at alleviating its effects. To enhance our comprehension of how inequality influences support for redistribution, this paper investigates the mediating role of descriptive meritocracy (i.e., the degree to which meritocracy is perceived to exist in society). Using a cross-sectiol study (N = 1536) and a follow-up experimental-causal-chain design in two subsequent experiments (N = 530), we show that the perception of inequality leads to the perception that society is not meritocratic, which, in turn, promotes support for redistribution. These results underscore the significance of perceiving economic inequality in order to dismantle the normative meritocratic rratives that hinder its reduction. We discuss these findings as part of the effects of economic inequality on the normative climate that influences our individual outcomes.

The social rights of citizenship are conditioned on labor market participation. While quite a lot of research has focused on how, e.g., income and type of employment contract are related to attitudes towards welfare redistribution, less interest has been paid to the effect of being active on the labor at all, or not, for those attitudes. This study uses previously unexplored interview data with some 3,000 married women collected in 1968, at the time when married women entered the labor market in large numbers and the housewife era ended. Theoretically, the study departs from a discussion of self-interest and/or care oriented thinking as possible determinants of attitudes to redistribution. The results show that women who were active on the labor market, with control for other factors, tended to be more positive to redistribution than women in unpaid work. Translated into today’s discussion of why women tend to be more positive to redistribution than men, the results can be said to point away from explanations in terms of care-oriented thinking, and rather to factors like, e.g., self-interest.

We provide an overview of the field of preferences for redistribution research, including divergent terminological and theoretical approaches. We review the different uses of public attitudes, policy preferences and public opinion. We outline the theoretical roles of material interests, values and opinion-policy endogeneity. We also introduce and summarize the original research presented in this Special Issue. Among the key contributions of the Special Issue to the subfield are novel explorations of how socialization affects preferences for redistribution; an examination of how perceptions about inequality translate into policy preferences; a call for more research into the links between taxation and social policy preferences; explanations for the paradox of low levels of support for redistribution in the famously-generous Nordic countries; and new insights into class-specific policy preferences as well as the roles of immigration and diversity in determining such preferences.

Economie inequality in America is at historically high levels. Although most Americans indicate that they would prefer greater equality, redistributive policies aimed at reducing inequality are frequently unpopular. Traditional accounts posit that attitudes toward redistribution are driven by economic self-interest or ideological principles. From a social psychological perspective, however, we expected that subjective comparisons with other people may be a more relevant basis for self-interest than is material wealth. We hypothesized that participants would support redistribution more when they felt low than when they felt high in subjective status, even when actual resources and self-interest were held constant. Moreover, we predicted that people would legitimize these shifts in policy attitudes by appealing selectively to ideological principles concerning fairness. In four studies, we found correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Studies 2–4) evidence that subjective status motivates shifts in support for redistributive policies along with the ideological principles that justify them.

How does economic inequality affect support for redistribution to native citizens and immigrants? While prior studies have examined the separate effects of inequality and immigration on redistribution preferences, the interaction between inequality and communal identity has been largely overlooked. This article explains that inequality triggers selective solidarity. Individuals exposed to inequality become more supportive of redistribution – but only if the redistribution benefits native-born citizens. Inequality therefore reinforces the already popular opinion that native citizens deserve welfare priority and widens the gap between support for natives and support for immigrants. This study first provides cross-national evidence with survey data linked to contextual socio-economic indicators from advanced industrialized countries. To evaluate causally identified effects, it then presents the results of a survey experiment administered to a nationally representative sample of Italian citizens. The findings imply that economic inequality can increase support for populist radical right parties that advocate discrimination in access to welfare services based on native citizenship.

Why do voters agree to bear the costs of bailing out other countries? Despite the prominence of public opinion in the ongoing debate over the eurozone bailouts, voters' preferences on the topic are poorly understood. We conduct the first systematic analysis of this issue using observational and experimental survey data from Germany, the country shouldering the largest share of the EU's financial rescue fund. Testing a range of theoretical explanations, we find that individuals' own economic standing has limited explanatory power in accounting for their position on the bailouts. In contrast, social dispositions such as altruism and cosmopolitanism robustly correlate with support for the bailouts. The results indicate that the divide in public opinion over the bailouts does not reflect distributive lines separating domestic winners and losers. Instead, the bailout debate is better understood as a foreign policy issue that pits economic nationalist sentiments versus greater cosmopolitan affinity and other-regarding concerns.