When and why do people come to oppose large income disparities? Studying this question matters as rising economic inequality is a pressing social problem associated with a series of social ills that stand in the way of building fair, well-functioning societies. While social scientists have shown that self-interest can sometimes explain redistributive preferences, much remains to be understood about why that is not always the case. In her doctoral thesis, Irene Pañeda Fernández argues that this may partly be due to how experiences of misfortune do not necessarily always lead to a spike in redistributive demands.
In the first part of the dissertation, Misfortune and redistributive preferences, Pañeda focuses on the case of natural disasters – which are set to become more common due to climate change but whose consequences on attitudes toward inequality remain vastly under researched. She finds that, across the world, how surprising a natural disaster is conditions whether it leads to a spike in redistributive demands or not. Looking at redistributive demands of the same individuals before and after the large 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, she finds that the disaster increased demands to redistribute benefits to the poor but left demands for higher taxes on the rich unaffected. These results stand in contrast with findings that financial crises increase demands for progressive taxation and show how different types of shocks may have different consequences. Taken together, Pañeda’s work on natural disasters highlights an important caveat to the ability of natural disasters to bring about a reckoning with inequality.
Pañeda’s interest in experiences in misfortune is not limited to natural disasters. In the second part of her dissertation, she shifts focus and considers a more mundane type of misfortune: living in precarious material circumstances. Previous research suggests that the extent to which individuals perceive inequality to stem out of effort versus luck shapes their redistributive demands. Along with her co-authors, she uncovers an important caveat: the poor’s redistributive demands are not shaped by the extent to which they perceive inequality to stem out of effort or luck whereas such perception are decisive for the rich. In order to explain this finding, Pañeda advances two complementary explanations. The first one is based on the idea that poverty reduces the importance of other-regarding concerns in redistributive preferences and the second one is based on an overlooked observation by sociologist Michael Young: losing out due to effort may be just as if not more painful than losing out due to luck. These findings suggest the poor’s perception of how fair society is, and the extent to which they adopt meritocratic frames to explain inequality, is not a likely explanation of why taxes are not higher and social welfare more expansive. To the extent that redistributive demands do translate into policy, it is the fairness beliefs of the rich that would seem more relevant for future changes in redistribution.
Read Irene Pañeda's thesis in Cadmus.
Irene Pañeda Fernández defended her dissertation on 28 January 2022 at the EUI. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, where she works on a project collecting panel data in West African countries to better understand migration intentions and decisions in origin countries.