TY  - JOUR
AU  - Vigdor,Jacob L.
TI  - Fifty Million Voters Can't Be Wrong: Economic Self-Interest and Redistributive Politics
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12371
PY  - 2006
Y2  - July 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12371
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12371.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jacob L. Vigdor
Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Box 90312 Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
Tel: 919/613-9226
Fax: 919/681-8288
E-Mail: jacob.vigdor@duke.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-07-24
AB  - Why do voters at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum support political candidates who generally disfavor redistributive policies? Existing explanations often presume that voters are explicitly acting in opposition to their economic self-interest, or that they hold persistently optimistic expectations regarding the probability of moving into the upper ranks of the income distribution. This paper provides an alternative economic explanation. When voters evaluate their well-being by making relative utility comparisons, support for redistribution depends not only on absolute income but on one's status relative to a reference group. When reference groups are defined geographically, support depends on exposure to higher-income neighbors. The predictions of the model are supported by empirical evidence drawn from county-level election returns in 1980 and 2000, and by individual-level polling data following the 2000 election.
ER  -