Invisible inequality leads to punishing the poor and rewarding the rich
Name
SSRN-id3051673.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
5.61 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0732a1b44b29517c946458dc6c7baa88
Author(s)
HAUSER, OLIVER P
KRAFT-TODD, GORDON T
RAND, DAVID G
NOWAK, MARTIN A
NORTON, MICHAEL I
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Behavioural Public Policy
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
AbstractFour experiments examine how lack of awareness of inequality affect behaviour towards the rich and poor. In Experiment 1, participants who became aware that wealthy individuals donated a smaller percentage of their income switched from rewarding the wealthy to rewarding the poor. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants who played a public goods game – and were assigned incomes reflective of the US income distribution either at random or on merit – punished the poor (for small absolute contributions) and rewarded the rich (for large absolute contributions) when incomes were unknown; when incomes were revealed, participants punished the rich (for their low percentage of income contributed) and rewarded the poor (for their high percentage of income contributed). In Experiment 4, participants provided with public education contributions for five New York school districts levied additional taxes on mostly poorer school districts when incomes were unknown, but targeted wealthier districts when incomes were revealed. These results shed light on how income transparency shapes preferences for equity and redistribution. We discuss implications for policy-makers.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/BPP.2019.4
