Equalizer
High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization
Kelly Kirkland et al.
PNAS Nexus, July 2024
Abstract:
Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society, in turn increasing moralization -- that is, the greater tendency to employ or emphasize morality in everyday life -- as an attempt to restore order and control. Using longitudinal data from X, formerly known as Twitter, our first study demonstrates that high economic inequality is associated with greater use of moral language online (e.g. the use of words such as "disgust", "hurt", and "respect'). Study 2 then examined data from 41 regions around the world, generally showing that higher inequality has a small association with harsher moral judgments of people's everyday actions. Together these findings demonstrate that economic inequality is linked to the tendency to see the world through a moral lens.
Billionaire Superstar: Public Image and Demand for Taxation
Ricardo Perez-Truglia & Jeffrey Yusof
NBER Working Paper, July 2024
Abstract:
In the United States, there are 741 billionaires with a combined net worth of $5.2 trillion. These billionaires live highly public lives, with some achieving superstar status. Despite growing inequality, billionaires face effective tax rates lower than the average American. Is this due to a lack of public support for taxation? Is it due to misperceptions about billionaires' lives and careers? To address these questions, we conducted a survey experiment with a sample of 9,013 Americans. We designed multiple treatments based on research on preferences for redistribution and arguments made by academics, journalists, and the general public to increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Our findings reveal significant misperceptions about billionaires, with individuals updating their beliefs in response to information. Contrary to expert predictions that all treatments would positively affect the demand for taxation, most treatments have a null or negative effect. Providing information about the lavish lifestyles of billionaires does have a robust positive effect on the demand for taxation.
The Great Separation: Top Earner Segregation at Work in Advanced Capitalist Economies
Olivier Godechot et al.
American Journal of Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Earnings segregation at work is an understudied topic in social science, despite the workplace being an everyday nexus for social mixing, cohesion, contact, claims-making, and resource exchange. It is all the more urgent to study as workplaces, in the last decades, have undergone profound reorganizations that could impact the magnitude and evolution of earnings segregation. Analyzing linked employer-employee panel administrative databases, we estimate the evolving isolation of higher earners from other employees in 12 countries: Canada, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, South Korea, and Sweden. We find in almost all countries a growing workplace isolation of top earners and dramatically declining exposure of top earners to bottom earners. We do a first exploration of the main factors accounting for this trend: deindustrialization, workplace downsizing restructuring (including layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, and subcontracting) and digitalization contribute substantially to the increase in top earner segregation. These findings open up a future research agenda on the causes and consequences of top earner segregation.
Wealth at Birth and its Effect on Child Academic Achievement and Behavioral Problems
Luis Faundez & Robert Kaestner
NBER Working Paper, June 2024
Abstract:
In this article, we examine the association between family wealth and academic achievement and socioemotional behaviors of children ages 5 to 12. We examine whether wealth prior to birth and at ages 4 or 5 affects academic test scores and behavioral problems during two periods of childhood, ages 5 to 8 and ages 9 to 12, for a large and relatively recent cohort of children. We also examine associations between different forms of wealth (e.g., home equity) and child achievement and behaviors. Finally, we assess whether wealth prior to birth mediates racial/ethnic disparities in child achievement and disparities in achievement by maternal education/ability (AFQT). Results of our analysis indicate that wealth, particularly financial wealth that is the most liquid, has a modest positive association with achievement test scores. We also find that wealth is associated with fewer behavioral problems, but these results are less robust.
The Politics of Concentrated Advantage
Stephanie Ternullo
Harvard Working Paper, March 2024
Abstract:
The local policies that sustain the "concentration of advantage" in America's suburbs are a durable feature of American political geography. This remains true despite the fact that suburbs increasingly favor the Democratic Party in national elections. As such, this paper asks: What explains the persistence of concentrated advantage in suburbs despite so much political change? What are the contemporary political causes and consequences of concentrated advantage? To answer these questions, I draw on a mixed-methods study that examines the reproduction of suburban advantage through the case of restrictive zoning. I first draw on survey evidence to show that suburbs remain sites of particular opposition to housing densification policies. Next, I turn to more than 200 in-depth interviews with residents of three California suburbs to explain this suburban point of view on density: I show that it is composed of both passive opposition-a sense that pro-density policies do not appear to address suburban homeowners' subjective conceptions of California's housing crisis-and active opposition-once they learn about pro-density policies or experience their effects, suburban homeowners view them as urban encroachment into historically protected "suburban" ways of life. Finally, I show that this spatial concentration of preferences has important policy consequences: residents who oppose density, when concentrated within municipal boundaries, can mobilize to prevent density. Drawing on an original dataset of residential zoning ballot measures in California from 1990-2020 and a Regression Discontinuity design, I show that suburban residents are voting more often and more restrictively on these measures; and when they do vote restrictively, they succeed in limiting the supply of multi-family housing. These findings shed light on the ongoing political processes that help sustain spatial inequalities between suburbs and cities despite residential turnover and political change at the national level.
On the Determinants of Young Adult Outcomes: Impacts of Randomly Assigned Neighborhoods For Children in Military Families
Laura Kawano et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2024
Abstract:
Using the quasi-random assignment of 760,000 children in U.S. military families, we show that neighborhood attributes experienced during childhood have powerful impacts on SAT scores, college-going and earnings. For earnings and college going outcomes, location during high school is twice as important as location during elementary school, and for SAT scores, location during middle school has the strongest impact. There is little evidence of positive interactions in neighborhood quality across ages groups. Importantly, the same locations benefit children with equal potency across race or sex. Twenty years of exposure in a 1 standard deviation "better" county raises SAT composite scores by 10 points (1.8 percentiles), raises college attendance by 1.7 percentage points, earnings by 2.2 percentile points, and lowers EITC receipt by 10%. Impacts are three times more potent when we measure neighborhood quality at the zip code level: twenty years of exposure to a one (county level) standard deviation better zip code raises college going by 6.7 percentage points, SAT composite by 38 points and income percentile at age 25 by 6.1 points. By equalizing average neighborhood quality for Black and White families, we estimate that the Army's quasi-random assignment reduces Black-white earnings gaps among the children of Army personnel by 23%.