Rising inequality has brought redistribution back on the political agenda. In theory, inequality aversion drives people’s support for redistribution. People can dislike both advantageous inequality (comparison relative to those worse off) and disadvantageous inequality (comparison relative to those better off). Existing experimental evidence reveals substantial variation across people in these preferences. However, evidence is scarce on the broader role of these two distinct forms of inequality aversion for redistribution in society. We provide evidence by exploiting a unique combination of data. We use an incentivized experiment to measure inequality aversion in a large population sample (≈9,000 among 20- to 64-y-old Danes). We link the elicited inequality aversion to survey information on individuals’ support for public redistribution (policies that reduce income differences) and administrative records revealing their private redistribution (real-life donations to charity). In addition, the link to administrative data enables us to include a large battery of controls in the empirical analysis. Theory predicts that support for public redistribution increases with both types of inequality aversion, while private redistribution should increase with advantageous inequality aversion, but decrease with disadvantageous inequality aversion. A strong dislike for disadvantageous inequality makes people willing to sacrifice own income to reduce the income of people who are better off, thereby reducing the distance to people with more income than themselves. Public redistribution schemes achieve this but private donations to charity do not. Our empirical results provide strong support for these predictions and with quantitatively large effects compared to other predictors.

中文翻译：

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不平等厌恶预示着对公共和私人再分配的支持


日益加剧的不平等使再分配重新回到了政治议程上。从理论上讲，不平等厌恶推动了人们对再分配的支持。人们既不喜欢有利的不平等（相对于那些生活较差的人进行比较），也可以不喜欢不利的不平等（相对于那些较富裕的人的比较）。现有的实验证据表明，人们在这些偏好方面存在很大差异。然而，关于这两种不同形式的不平等厌恶在社会中对再分配的更广泛作用的证据很少。我们通过利用独特的数据组合来提供证据。我们使用激励实验来测量大型人口样本（20 至 64 岁的丹麦人中有 ≈9,000 人）中的不平等厌恶。我们将引发的不平等厌恶与个人对公共再分配支持率（减少收入差异的政策）的调查信息和揭示其私人再分配（现实生活中对慈善机构的捐款）的行政记录联系起来。此外，与行政数据的联系使我们能够在实证分析中包括大量控制措施。理论预测，对公共再分配的支持会随着两种类型的不平等厌恶而增加，而私人再分配应该随着有利的不平等厌恶而增加，但随着不利的不平等厌恶而减少。对不利不平等的强烈厌恶使人们愿意牺牲自己的收入来减少富裕人群的收入，从而缩短与收入比自己高的人的距离。公共再分配计划可以实现这一目标，但向慈善机构的私人捐款却无法实现。我们的实证结果为这些预测提供了强有力的支持，并且与其他预测因子相比，在数量上具有较大的影响。