Why do high-income earners support higher levels of income redistribution in some countries than in others? I argue that differences in the social insurance design have consequences for fairness considerations and that this matters for preference formation. Flat-rate systems provide social benefits in equal amounts to everyone in need, while earnings-related systems provide benefits in relation to previous earnings. In the case of income loss, earnings-related systems maintain unfair income differences, while flat- rate systems equalize unfair income differences between the rich and the poor. Cross-national patterns reveal that support for redistribution among the rich is higher in income-maintaining welfare states. For a strict test of my fairness argument, I conduct a laboratory experiment and show that participants reduce inequality more if given endowment differences are maintained in the case of loss.

Women are still underrepresented in positions of power and have limited access to the most prestigious policy areas. As a consequence, women do not have the same opportunities as men to influence policy-making. We have theoretical reasons to believe that the politics of committee assignments give room for female discrimination. We assess differences in committee membership using unique fine-grained data on members of German state parliaments from 1948 to 2016 and provide several measures of committee importance. With decomposition methods we test whether observable qualifications and experience, electoral incentives and structural aspects help explain gendered committee assignments. If anything, we find that female marginalisation becomes more pronounced as more women enter state parliaments. Observable characteristics and structural aspects explain these patterns only partially. We conclude that women remain systematically disadvantaged in the most relevant policy domains.

In this paper we focus on perceptions of (or beliefs about) macro inequality and we argue that perceptions matter differently to the rich and the poor. We hypothesise that material and other-regarding factors make inequality perceptions push the redistribution preferences of the poor in a similar direction (i.e., more perceived inequality, more support for redistribution). For the rich, we argue that material self-interest and other-regarding concerns push redistribution preferences in opposing directions. Our paper attempts a degree of methodological triangulation by developing both an observational and an experimental analysis supporting our theoretical claims. First we show how perceptions matter for the rich and for the poor in an analysis of ISSP data (1999, 2009 and 2019). We then develop an online survey experiment (fielded in the UK in the summer of 2022) with a randomized information treatment designed to shift perceptions of macro inequality.

Some political economists argue that who the poor are matters for whether the rich support redistribution. I propose that whether and how social identity influences redistribution preferences depends on the fairness ideal that people endorse. I implement a laboratory study which allows for behavioral heterogeneity across fairness types, and for a distinction between preference-based and information-based identity mechanisms. Results suggest that participants adhere to liberal, parochial/luck egalitarian, and welfare maximizing principles of fairness. Only the parochial/luck egalitarian subgroup reveals ingroup favoritism. The evidence supports a preference-based explanation and suggest that information is important for absolute levels of inequality reduction.

Social insurance models prominently argue that selfish demand for future bene- fits explains support for redistribution among the rich. In this article, I posit that social insurance defines the scope of other-regarding preferences. The welfare state provides benefits to insure against individual exposure to labor market risks. Some welfare states provide social safety nets and benefits are provided in equal amounts to everyone, while in others, benefits are related to previous earnings and stabi- lize individual incomes over the life-cycle. These structural differences define the relative impact of labor market risks on individual income, and consequently, the stability of one’s living status over time. I employ simulated unemployment replacement rates to construct a measure for the governing principle of social insurance and show that average support for redistribution is higher in earnings-related systems. Labor market risk has a stronger impact on redistribution preferences in flat-rate systems. Experimental evidence shows that risky endowments influence transfer shares negatively. Previous social insurance approaches have not taken into account the other-regarding perspective.