Revisiting the effect of growing up in a recession on attitudes towards redistribution

Abstract

Giuliano and Spilimbergo (2014) show that individuals who experienced a recession when young are more likely to favor redistribution in the short and long run. We revisit their analysis in three ways. First, we conduct a narrow replication in the General Social Survey and the World Values Survey; we successfully replicate the original results for outcomes that directly measure preferences for redistribution, but the results for other outcomes are less clear-cut. Second, adding recent survey waves yields results similar to the narrow replication. Third, a wide replication in a different dataset (International Social Survey Programme) corroborates the original results.

Recession Experiences During Early Adulthood Shape Prosocial Attitudes Later in Life

“…Our study builds upon previous research that has demonstrated how life experiences shape individual preferences across various domains. For instance, previous studies have explored how recession experiences influence risk preferences (Malmendier andNagel, 2011, Shigeoka, 2019), preferences for redistribution (Giuliano and Spilimbergo, 2014, Fisman et al, 2015, Roth and Wohlfart, 2018, Bietenbeck and Thiemann, 2023), social preferences (Li et al, 2023), job preferences (Cotofan et al, 2023, attitudes towards immigration (Cotofan et al, 2021), political leanings and beliefs (Krishnarajan et al, 2023, Giuliano and Spilimbergo, 2023b, as well as character traits (Bianchi, 2014). Moreover, experience with democratic systems has been shown to impact preferences for redistribution (Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007) and attitudes towards political institutions (Fuchs-Schündeln andSchündeln, 2015, Acemoglu et al, 2021).…”