Intergenerational mobility and preference for redistribution: evidence from East Asia

ABSTRACT

Conventional wisdom posits that intergenerational social mobility reduces individual preference for redistribution. Yet, this thesis is drawn from the case of democracies, where electoral competition plays a key role in redistribution. In this study, we argue that intergenerational social mobility’s effect on individual preference for redistribution differs in dictatorships, where the state is the key decision-maker of redistribution. With the data of the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey, we find that citizens’ upward intergenerational social mobility increases with their support for government-led redistribution in autocracies. This finding contributes to the understanding of individual preference for redistribution in dictatorships.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergenerational social mobility
• preference for redistribution
• democracy
• autocracy
• government trust
• East Asia

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Ding-Yi Lai

Ding-Yi Lai is PhD Candidate in the Department of Social Welfare at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. His research interests include comparative welfare states, comparative authoritarianism, welfare development of dictatorships, and quantitative research methods.

Jen-Der Lue

Jen-Der Lue is Professor at the Department of Social Welfare, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. He received his PhD in Faculty for Sociology from University of Bielefeld in 1999. His specialized fields focus on comparative political economy, comparative social policy, health politics and political sociology. He has published in Comparative Sociology, Journal of Asian Public Policy, Social Policy & Social Work, Social Policy & Society, Taiwanese Sociology, among others. He served as Director for Social Affairs at Taichung City Government between 2014-18 and pushed the idea of social investment reform at social policy field. Since September 2020, he has served as Political Deputy Minister of Civil Service Protection and Training Commission, Examination Yuan.

Wen-Chin Wu

Wen-Chin Wu is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He received his PhD in political science from Michigan State University in 2012. His research focuses on comparative authoritarianism and political economy. He has published in Democratization, International Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, Party Politics, Political Research Quarterly, among others.