The economic context of solidarity. Period vs. cohort differences in support for income redistribution in Britain and the United States

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates whether economic indicators drive changes in support for income redistribution in Great Britain and the United States. Cross-sectional data from the British Social Attitudes survey (1986–2014) and the General Social Survey (1978–2014) are analysed by means of hierarchical age-period-cohort models, which makes it possible to disentangle cohort and year effects of economic context. This approach suggests that the level of inequality indeed matters for individuals' redistributive preferences. The observed patterns are more complex and intricate, however, than what is postulated by median voter theory. Most importantly, the analysis reveals cohort dynamics that have been neglected in previous research: A cohort's redistributive preferences are related to the level of inequality experienced during its formative years. American cohorts born during the post-war period of low inequality are found to be most averse of income redistribution by the government. In Britain cohort differences are markedly less outspoken and, surprisingly, the opposite pattern is found. Besides cohort effects of economic inequality, the British data also reveal an impact of the level of inequality prevailing in the year of survey. In line with an institutionalist perspective, British citizens living in more unequal times are not more, but less supportive of redistribution.

KEYWORDS:

• Income inequality
• redistributive preferences
• median voter hypothesis
• age-period-cohort analysis
• British Social Attitudes survey
• General Social Survey

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2015 Conference of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) in Ljubljana and at the 2014 EDAC-ESPAnet winter school in Leuven.

Notes on contributor

Bart Meuleman is Associate Professor at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), University of Leuven (Belgium). His research focuses on cross-national comparisons of value and attitude patterns, such as ethnic prejudice, egalitarianism and support for the welfare state.

Notes

1 Inhabitants of Great Britain are the population of the survey data analysed, while the economic indicators and social policies refer to the United Kingdom (i.e. Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Therefore, both territorial indications are used throughout this paper, depending on the context.

2 This operationalization takes into account that incomes fluctuate across the life cycle, with the highest income towards the end of the professional career, and that individuals compare themselves with primarily with members of the own birth cohort. Equivalized household income as a percentage of the median of the total population yields very similar results.

3 Additional analyses show that the conclusions are robust against the changes in the definition of formative period.

4 The small observed cohort variance in Britain underestimates cohort dynamics, however. When controlling for individual predictors, the cohort variance doubles, meaning that the differential composition of birth cohorts in terms of individual characteristics supresses differences in support for income redistribution.

5 Additionally, I estimated models with interactions between inequality and the rate of economic growth (both at the year and at the cohort level). After all, citizens’ evaluations of inequality might be contingent on the general economic prosperity: in times of strong growth, people at the bottom of the ladder might willing to accept high inequality because they believe that ‘the rising tides lifts all boats’. None of the interaction effects were found to be significant, however.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) project ‘Solidarity in times of crisis? The impact of the economic crisis on attitudes toward redistribution and welfare state support’ (grant reference G.0A25.12).