Support for redistribution on the wane among U.S. seniors and African Americans

According to long-trusted economic models, when economic inequality increases so too does government redistribution of income. As the average income in an economy pulls away from the median income, more voters will want to redistribute the uneven gains from economic growth accruing to the wealthy. Yet in the United States, redistribution towards the bottom and middle hasn’t increased even though inequality has increased quite a bit. Why have these long-trusted models failed to accurately predict reality?

There is some evidence that U.S. elected officials’ responsiveness to preferences for redistribution has declined over time. But voters’ demand for redistribution also appears not to have increased over time. A new paper presented last week as part of a recent Brookings Papers on Economic Activity event tries to understand why preferences for redistribution have changed among voters over time.

Political scientist Vivekinan Ashok of Yale University and economists Ebonya Washington of Yale and Ilyana Kuziemko of Princeton University try to understand the demand for redistribution by looking at responses to questions from the General Social Survey and American National Election Studies survey— which include questions that are related to redistribution. What they find is that while the overall trend in support of redistribution stood still, two groups that were once traditionally in favor of redistribution shifted away from it over time.

Those two groups: seniors and black Americans.

The three authors also point to some of the reasons why this may be the case with these two important voting blocs. For seniors, it all comes down to one particular form of redistribution: health care. The authors argue that calls for higher redistribution make seniors, who receive health insurance via Medicare, believe this particular form of redistribution will be curtailed. Ashok, Washington, and Kuziemko point out that support for redistribution among seniors in other advanced economies that provide universal health insurance has not declined more compared to their general population, which makes sense as they wouldn’t have to fear about cuts to healthcare in order to expand it to others. And the survey data show that attitudes among U.S. seniors toward redistribution via health insurance are strongly predictive of overall attitudes toward redistribution.

The authors are less sure of an explanation for African Americans’ declining preference for redistribution. The authors’ research shows that most of the decline among blacks is because of declining demand for race-based redistributive programs. But why that has happened even as the relative economic progress of blacks compared to whites has stalled isn’t clear.

At the Brookings event, one of the constant comments about the paper was that their findings could also be explained by the shifting generational arc. The decline in demand for redistribution among seniors could be about the passing of the Greatest Generation, who were generally in favor of redistribution, alongside the aging of the Baby Boomers, who appear to not prefer redistribution as they near or enter retirement. One participant added that some preliminary research finds that Americans believe inequality is a problem but that they think it’s the responsibility of business to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

Ashok, Kuziemko, and Washington are clear that their paper doesn’t provide all the answers. But in pointing out some key facts and offering some possible explanations, they provide an important jumping-off point for understanding how public opinion about redistribution have changed in an era of rising inequality.