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Yardsticks of inequality: Preferences for redistribution in advanced democracies

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posted on 2019-10-15, 09:23 authored by Anthony KevinsAnthony Kevins, Alexander Horn, Carsten Jensen, Kees van Kersbergen
This article explores how preferences for redistribution among voters are affected by the structure of inequality. There are strong theoretical reasons to believe that some voter segments matter more than others, not least the so-called median-income voter, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to directly analysing distinct income groups’ redistributive preferences. In addition, while much of the previous literature has focused on broad levels of inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, it is likely that individuals respond to different types of inequality in different ways. To rectify this gap, we use data from the European Social Survey and Eurostat to examine the interactive effect of income deciles and various measures of inequality. Results suggest that inequality especially affects the middle-income groups – that is, the assumed median-income voters. Moreover, not all inequality matters equally: it is inequality vis-à-vis those around the 80th percentile that shapes redistributive preferences.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Politics and International Studies

Published in

Journal of European Social Policy

Volume

28

Issue

4

Pages

402 - 418

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

Kevins, A., Horn, A., Jensen, C., & van Kersbergen, K., Yardsticks of inequality: Preferences for redistribution in advanced democracies, Journal of European Social Policy (28:4) pp. 402-418. Copyright © 2018 (The Authors). DOI: 10.1177/0958928717753579. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference.

Publication date

2018-02-13

Copyright date

2018

ISSN

0958-9287

eISSN

1461-7269

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Anthony Kevins

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