Trust in government and its effect on preferences for income redistribution and perceived tax burden

Abstract

This paper explores how a trust in government shared by neighbors is associated with individual preferences for income redistribution and individual perceptions regarding income tax burden. Three measures for trust in government are used:"trust in ministries and government agencies", "trust in diet members", and "trust in members of municipal councils". After controlling for individual characteristics, the key findings are: (1) people are more likely to express preferences for income redistribution when trust in government in their residential area is high; (2) people are more likely to perceive their tax burden as low when trust in government in their residential area is high; and (3) when the sample is divided into high-and low-income earners, these results are only clearly observed for high-income earners and not low-income earners.JEL classification: D30; D63, H20, Z13

Fairness and the Unselfish Demand for Redistribution by Taxpayers and Welfare Recipients

“…increases that are not high enough to enable a move to a higher percentile of the distribution). These results are consistent with the seminal work of Meltzer and Richard (1981), claiming that voters at the median of the income distribution should vote for higher levels of taxes and redistribution, and with previous empirical findings that, ceteris paribus, richer people are more likely to demand less redistribution and lower taxes (Corneo and Gruner, 2002, Alesina and La Ferrara, 2005Powdthavee and Oswald, 2014, Yamamura, 2014.…”

How Elastic Are Preferences for Redistribution? Evidence from Randomized Survey Experiments

“…The General Social Survey also shows a strongly negative trend. Related to our finding, Yamamura (2014) finds that above average income respondents in Japan are more likely to support redistribution when trust in government in their residential area is high. fails to connect concern for inequality with actual public policy measures.…”

Social Conflict and Redistributive Preferences Among Rich and Poor: Testing the Hypothesis of Acemoglu and Robinson

“…To test this Hypothesis, the present paper uses data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), which includes more than 13,000 observations. This paper attempts to control endogeneity bias by following the method used in Yamamura (2012;2014), using country-level data on the average value of perceived conflict. Furthermore, in other specifications, instrumental variables such as degree of ethnic fractionalization and average years of schooling in 1870 are used to control for endogeneity bias.…”

“…6 Some empirical works have examined the determinants of perceived income inequality (e.g., Tomioka and Outake, 2005;Meagher and Wilson, 2008;Xu and Gerand, 2010). A large number of existing works attempt to ascertain the determinants of preference for redistribution and to identify the mechanism for such a preference (e.g., Ravallion and Lokshin, 2000;Corneo andGrüner, 2002, Alesina andAngeletos, 2005;Alesina and La Ferrara, 2005;Alesina and Guuliano, 2009;Klor and Shayo, 2010;Luttmer and Singhal, 2011;Dahlberg et al, 2012;Bjornskov et al, 2013;Yamamura, 2012Yamamura, , 2014. Meager and Wilson (2008) compared the perceived income differences and preference for redistribution by suggesting basic statistics.…”