Fairness and the unselfish demand for redistribution by taxpayers and welfare recipients

Sabatini, Fabio and Ventura, Marco and Yamamura, Eiji and Zamparelli, Luca (2017): Fairness and the unselfish demand for redistribution by taxpayers and welfare recipients.

Abstract

We illustrate how the desire to live in a fair society that rewards individual effort and hard work triggers an unselfish though rational demand for redistribution. This leads the well off to prefer higher taxes and the poor to reject extreme progressivity. We then provide evidence of these behaviors using a nationally representative survey from Italy. Our empirical analysis confirms that a stronger aversion to unfair distributive outcomes is associated with a higher support for redistribution by individuals with high income and to a lower demand for redistribution by those with low income.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: fairness, income distribution, inequalities, taxation, Welfare, redistribution, free-riding, civic capital, social capital
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement; H - Public Economics > H1 - Structure and Scope of Government > H10 - General; H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H50 - General; H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H53 - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology

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