Project manager: BERTIL TUNGODDEN

Project duration: 2017 - 2018

Project details:

In this project, we will study the fairness preferences, beliefs, and attitudes of 60,000 participants, covering 60 countries, in the Gallup World Poll 2018: Fairness preferences: We identify people’s fairness views and how they trade off fairness and efficiency by letting the participants act as spectators and make real-life redistributive choices for two workers. Beliefs about the source of inequality: We identify beliefs about the sources of inequality by asking the participants a series of questions about why the rich are richer than the poor. Beliefs about the cost of redistribution: We identify beliefs about the cost of redistribution by asking the participants a question about how they believe the rich will respond to an increase in taxes. Attitudes to income inequality and redistribution: We identify attitudes to income inequality and redistribution by asking them questions about how they view income differences and redistribution in their country. In addition, we ask them background questions about where their parents were born. The study also has access to all the other background data collected in the Gallup World Poll 2018.

Contributions:

Overall, the project provides a novel data set on the nature of inequality acceptance. It provides unique descriptive data on inequality acceptance across the world; comprehensive data on people’s beliefs about the sources of inequality and cost of redistribution; novel data on how unfair people perceive the income distribution to be and their attitude to redistribution; causal evidence on the importance of the source of inequality and efficiency considerations for inequality acceptance; rich individual data that will support a number of studies on how inequality acceptance is associated with socioeconomic status, religion, gender, age, and other relevant background variables.