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The distributional preferences of Americans, 2013–2016

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Raymond Fisman ,
Pamela Jakiela ,
Shachar Kariv Open the ORCID record for Shachar Kariv [Opens in a new window]  and
Silvia Vannutelli
Raymond Fisman
Affiliation:
Boston University, Boston, USA
Pamela Jakiela
Affiliation:
Williams College, Williamstown, USA
Shachar Kariv*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
Silvia Vannutelli
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Evanston, USA
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

We study the distributional preferences of Americans during 2013–2016, a period of social and economic upheaval. We decompose preferences into two qualitatively different tradeoffs—fair-mindedness versus self-interest, and equality versus efficiency—and measure both at the individual level in a large and diverse sample. Although Americans are heterogeneous in terms of both fair-mindedness and equality-efficiency orientation, we find that the individual-level preferences in 2013 are highly predictive of those in 2016. Subjects that experienced an increase in household income became more self-interested, and those who voted for Democratic presidential candidates in both 2012 and 2016 became more equality-oriented.

Keywords

Distributional preferencesSocial preferencesFairnessImpartialityEqualityEfficiencyRationalityRevealed preferenceRedistributionPolitical decisionsVotingHousehold incomeAmerican life panel (ALP)Experiment

JEL classification

D63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement C79: Other C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , September 2023 , pp. 727 - 748
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Economic Science Association 2023.

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Footnotes

Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-023-09792-z.

We are grateful to Ernst Fehr and Daniel Markovits for helpful discussions and for suggestions from the audience at the Ben-Porath Annual Lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a number of seminar participants. We thank the American Life Panel (ALP) team at the RAND Corporation for technical and administrative support. We acknowledge financial support from the Center for Equitable Growth (CEG) at the University of California, Berkeley. Any findings, opinions and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the institutions or any funding agency. The replication material for the study is available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/9EQJZE &faces-redirect=true.

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