Culture Beyond Borders: Does the Culture in the Country of Origin Determine Our Preferences for Redistribution?

This paper looks at the effect of culture of origin on immigrants’ preferences for redistribution. This study is motivated by rising policy charged discussion about cultural determinants of individual preferences and prior research by Luttmer and Singhal “Culture, Context, and the Taste for Redistribution” published in the American Economic Journal (2011). The previous study claims that immigrants keep their preferences for redistribution after immigration, and these preferences are culturally driven even when the comprehensive range of economic factors are controlled. However, the highly topical political debate forces us to ask the same question again and to re-check the robustness of association between preferences of immigrants and average preferences in their countries of origin. This paper extends both the temporal and geographical scope of the study and introduces non-economic parameters typical for immigrants into explanatory models. The main message of the paper is that immigrants experience the effect of culture of origin on their preferences, but the updated and extended data show that the size of the effect is generally half that found in previous studies. This research has both political and methodological relevance.