IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v95y2014i2p468-485.html

Do Citizens Link Attitudes with Preferences? Economic Inequality and Government Spending in the “New Gilded Age”

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas J. Hayes

Abstract

type="main"> This article investigates the extent to which people link policy preferences with unequal outcomes. As the American public is both aware and supportive of reducing income inequality in the abstract, it is an open question whether this concern is translated into support for policies that might help alleviate the rise in economic inequality. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is used with data from the General Social Survey (GSS). The relationship between attitudes about wealth inequality and spending preferences is positive, but not strong. Moreover, there is no evidence that the least well-off are more attuned to linking attitudes about inequality with spending preferences than the upper or middle classes. The main findings suggest that while citizens are able to link attitudes about inequality with spending preferences, the link might not be strong enough to propel elected officials to act as wealth inequality expands.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas J. Hayes, 2014. "Do Citizens Link Attitudes with Preferences? Economic Inequality and Government Spending in the “New Gilded Age”," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(2), pages 468-485, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:95:y:2014:i:2:p:468-485
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ssqu.12015
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard L. Cole & John Kincaid, 0. "Public Opinion and American Federalism: Perspectives on Taxes, Spending, and Trust—An ACIR Update," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 30(1), pages 189-201.
    2. Timothy M. Smeeding, 2005. "Public Policy, Economic Inequality, and Poverty: The United States in Comparative Perspective," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(s1), pages 955-983, December.
    3. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    4. Stimson, James A. & Mackuen, Michael B. & Erikson, Robert S., 1995. "Dynamic Representation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(3), pages 543-565, September.
    5. Enns, Peter K. & Kellstedt, Paul M., 2008. "Policy Mood and Political Sophistication: Why Everybody Moves Mood," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(3), pages 433-454, July.
    6. repec:cup:apsrev:v:57:y:1963:i:01:p:45-56_24 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Durr, Robert H., 1993. "What Moves Policy Sentiment?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 158-170, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Calcagno & Alexander Marsella & Yang Zhou, 2024. "Income inequality and party alternation: State‐level evidence from the United States," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(2), pages 355-374, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mijs, Jonathan Jan Benjamin, 2019. "The Paradox of Inequality: Income Inequality and Belief in Meritocracy go Hand in Hand," SocArXiv dcr9b, Center for Open Science.
    2. Roy Kwon, 2015. "Does Radical Partisan Politics Affect National Income Distributions? Congressional Polarization and Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–2008," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(1), pages 49-64, March.
    3. Michael Howlett, 2014. "From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ policy design: design thinking beyond markets and collaborative governance," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 47(3), pages 187-207, September.
    4. Moshe Maor, 2017. "The implications of the emerging disproportionate policy perspective for the new policy design studies," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(3), pages 383-398, September.
    5. Wendy Chen & William W. Franko & Robert J. McGrath, 2025. "Occupational licensing and income inequality in the states," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(4), pages 1374-1393, September.
    6. Bagchi, Sutirtha & Svejnar, Jan, 2015. "Does wealth inequality matter for growth? The effect of billionaire wealth, income distribution, and poverty," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 505-530.
    7. repec:osf:socarx:dcr9b_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Will Jennings & Peter John, 2009. "The Dynamics of Political Attention: Public Opinion and the Queen's Speech in the United Kingdom," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 838-854, October.
    9. Nicholas Bloom & Tarek Alexander Hassan & Aakash Kalyani & Josh Lerner & Ahmed Tahoun, 2021. "The diffusion of disruptive technologies," CEP Discussion Papers dp1798, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    10. Aurelie Charles & Damiano Sguotti, 2021. "Sustainable Earnings: How Can Herd Behavior in Financial Accumulation Feed into a Resilient Economic System?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-19, May.
    11. Armèn Hakhverdian, 2009. "Capturing Government Policy on the Left–Right Scale: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1956–2006," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(4), pages 720-745, December.
    12. Ida Camminatiello & Rosaria Lombardo & Mario Musella & Gianmarco Borrata, 2024. "A Model for Evaluating Inequalities in Sustainability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 879-898, December.
    13. Maida, Agata & Pezone, Vincenzo, 2024. "CEO Pay Disclosure and Within-Firm Wage Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 17243, IZA Network @ LISER.
    14. Kai Carstensen & Erich Gundlach & Susanne Hartmann, 2009. "The Augmented Solow Model with Mincerian Schooling and Externalities," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 10(4), pages 448-463, November.
    15. Kartik B. Athreya & Jessica Sackett Romero, 2015. "Land of Opportunity: Economic Mobility in the United States," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue 2Q, pages 169-191.
    16. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    17. Lou, Jiehong & Shen, Xingchi & Niemeier, Deb, 2020. "Are stay-at-home orders more difficult to follow for low-income groups?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    18. Thomas Blanchet & Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Clara Martínez-Toledano, 2018. "Applying Generalized Pareto Curves to Inequality Analysis," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 114-118, May.
    19. Wookjae Heo & John E. Grable & Barbara O’Neill, 2017. "Wealth Accumulation Inequality: Does Investment Risk Tolerance and Equity Ownership Drive Wealth Accumulation?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 209-225, August.
    20. Naguib, Costanza, 2019. "Estimating the Heterogeneous Impact of the Free Movement of Persons on Relative Wage Mobility," Economics Working Paper Series 1903, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    21. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/vbu6kd1s68o6r34k5bcm3iopv is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Arun Advani, 2022. "Who does and doesn't pay taxes?," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 5-22, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:95:y:2014:i:2:p:468-485. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.