Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Demand for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality
- Part I Demand for Redistribution: A Conceptual Framework
- 2 What Is Fair?
- 3 Unpacking Demand for Redistribution
- 4 As If Self-interested? The Correlates of Fairness Beliefs
- 5 When Material Self-interest Trumps Fairness Reasoning
- Part II Changes in Demand for Redistribution
- 6 Explaining Stability and Change
- 7 Fiscal Stress and the Erosion of Social Solidarity
- 8 Partisan Dynamics and Mass Attitudinal Change
- 9 How Proportionality Beliefs Form
- 10 The Nature and Origins of Reciprocity Beliefs
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
7 - Fiscal Stress and the Erosion of Social Solidarity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Demand for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality
- Part I Demand for Redistribution: A Conceptual Framework
- 2 What Is Fair?
- 3 Unpacking Demand for Redistribution
- 4 As If Self-interested? The Correlates of Fairness Beliefs
- 5 When Material Self-interest Trumps Fairness Reasoning
- Part II Changes in Demand for Redistribution
- 6 Explaining Stability and Change
- 7 Fiscal Stress and the Erosion of Social Solidarity
- 8 Partisan Dynamics and Mass Attitudinal Change
- 9 How Proportionality Beliefs Form
- 10 The Nature and Origins of Reciprocity Beliefs
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
Summary
Two groups display the highest support for generous redistribution to policies: (1) low-income beneficiaries, irrespective of their reciprocity beliefs, and (2) high-income contributors who trust that these policies benefit deserving recipients. This coalition is held together by redistribution to policies’ asymmetric economic implications. For low-income beneficiaries, redistribution to policies are high stakes, explaining high baseline support irrespective of reciprocity beliefs. In contrast, the uncertainty over the costs to high-income contributors of more generous redistribution to policies favors fairness reasoning, explaining higher than expected support within this group. Chapter 7 argues that fiscal stress, in the form of fiscal adjustment, can introduce a wedge in this pro-redistribution to coalition. Indeed, when the tax implications of generous social spending are no longer a hypothetical, it becomes much easier for people to reason from the perspective of their own pocketbook. In such a context, high-income respondents will react by choosing to concentrate financial efforts on social programs they directly benefit from, at the expense of redistribution to policies.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Fair Enough?Support for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality, pp. 142 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023