Social Mobility Perceptions and Inequality Acceptance

This paper examines how perceptions of social mobility affect distributional preferences. We conduct a randomized information intervention in a large and heterogeneous sample of Germans to manipulate beliefs about social mobility. While the information treatment renders perceptions significantly more pessimistic, it changes neither revealed distributional preferences nor support for redistribution or education spending. The large sample size allows us to rule out economically meaningful treatment effects. One reason for this result seems to be that respondents do not link low mobility rates to the role of luck and inequality of opportunity.