Understanding the Public's Attitudes towards Redistribution through Taxation

This paper explores the public's expressed attitudes towards redistribution, then addresses three important gaps in the literature on redistribution. First, studies of support for redistribution have used data focused on desires for transfers from the rich to the poor or to the poor in general, but redistributive polices may also benefit the middle class. Second, experimental research has shown that general views about redistribution may differ from concrete judgments about specific situations-yet much of the existing research uses responses to abstract questions. Finally, there is fundamental uncertainty as to what the public actually means when it suggests preferred distributions of the tax burden-are they expressing pure, ideal preferences, or combining these with their own views of the disincentive effects of higher tax rates? We use data from two nationally representative surveys on taxation and fairness as well as an experiment to address these issues. We find that Americans have some interest in redistribution to both the middle class and the poor. While demand for redistribution to the poor is influenced by many factors (including measures of altruism, political ideology and values) demand for redistribution to the middle class appears to be driven by self-interest and knowledge of the tax system. We find the determinants of demand to be similar under both abstract and concrete question forms. Finally, the experimental results suggest that not only does the public not include incentive effects into their expressions for desired progressivity; but that they do not believe they should be included-in other words, the public separates judgments of progressivity from judgments of economic efficiency.