Longevity risk is threatening the sustainability of traditional pension systems. To deal with this issue, decumulation strategies alternative to annuities have been proposed in the literature. However, heterogeneity in mortality experiences in the pool of policyholders due to socio-economic classes generates inequity, because of implicit wealth transfers from the more disadvantaged to the wealthier classes. We address this issue in a Group Self-Annuitization (GSA) scheme in the presence of stochastic mortality by proposing a redistributive GSA scheme where benefits are optimally shared across classes. The expected present values of the benefits in a standard GSA scheme show relevant gaps across socio-economic groups, which are reduced in the redistributive GSA scheme. We explore sensitivity to pool size, interest rates and mortality assumptions.

In this article, I defend and expand on what I call the republican view of the Kantian state’s duty to the poor. Against minimalist sceptics, I argue that the republican view makes a compelling case for the state’s duty with conceptual resources internal to Kant’s philosophy of right. Against maximalist critics, I argue that the republican view need not limit redistribution to poverty relief and that it provides resources to overcome an important interpretative challenge facing attempts at justifying more expansive redistribution on Kantian grounds.

We examine how taxes impact charitable giving and how this relationship is affected by the degree of wasteful government spending. In our model, individuals make donations to charities knowing that the government collects a flat-rate tax on income (net of charitable donations) and redistributes part of the tax revenue. The rest of the tax revenue is wasted. The model predicts that a higher tax rate increases charitable donations. Surprisingly, the model shows that a higher degree of waste decreases donations (when the elasticity of marginal utility with respect to consumption is high enough). We test the model’s predictions using a laboratory experiment with actual donations to charities and find that the tax rate has an insignificant effect on giving. The degree of waste, however, has a large, negative and highly significant effect on giving.

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.

We perform an experiment which provides a laboratory replica of some important features of the welfare state. In the experiment, all individuals in a group decide whether to make a costly effort, which produces a random (independent) outcome for each one of them. The group members then vote on whether to redistribute the resulting and commonly known total sum of earnings equally amongst themselves. This game has two equilibria, if played once. In one of them, all players make effort and there is little redistribution. In the other one, there is no effort and nothing to redistribute. A solution to the repeated game allows for redistribution and high effort, sustained by the threat to revert to the worst of these equilibria. Our results show that redistribution with high effort is not sustainable. The main reason for the absence of redistribution is that rich agents do not act differently depending on whether the poor have worked hard or not. The equilibrium in which redistribution may be sustained by the threat of punishing the poor if they do not exert effort is not observed in the experiment. Thus, the explanation of the behavior of the subjects lies in Hobbes, not in Rousseau.

Previous literature demonstrates that beliefs about the determinants of income inequality play a major role in individual support for income redistribution. This study investigates how people form beliefs regarding the extent to which work versus luck determines income inequality. Specifically, I examine whether people form self-serving beliefs to justify supporting personally advantageous redistributive policies. I use a laboratory experiment where I directly measure beliefs and manipulate the incentives to engage in self-deception. I first replicate earlier results demonstrating that (1) people attribute income inequality to work when they receive a high income and to luck when they receive a low income and (2) their beliefs about the source of income inequality influence their preferences over redistributive policies. However, I do not find that people’s beliefs about the causes of income inequality are further influenced by self-serving motivations based on a desire to justify favorable redistributive policies. I conclude that, in my experiment, self-serving beliefs about the causes of income inequality are driven primarily by overconfidence and self-image concerns and not to justify favorable redistributive policies.

We report experimental evidence showing a positive effect of redistribution on economic efficiency via the self-enforcement of property rights, and identify which status groups benefit more and which less. We model an economy in which wealth is produced if players voluntarily comply with the—efficient but inequitable—prevailing social order. We vary exogenously whether redistribution is feasible, and how it is organized. We find that redistribution benefits all status groups as property disputes recede. It is most effective when transfers are not discretionary but instead imposed by some exogenous administration. In the absence of coercive means to enforce property rights, it is the higher status groups, not the lower status groups, who benefit from redistribution being compulsory rather than voluntary.

The impact of redistributive policies on voluntary contributions is still not well understood. While a higher level of redistributive taxation decreases the price of voluntary giving, it also changes the income distribution by decreasing income inequality. This paper provides a controlled laboratory experiment to investigate the net impact of the tax rate on public goods provision. The experimental findings show that while the participants decrease their voluntary contributions as the pre-tax income distribution becomes more equal, they increase their contributions with taxation. These findings have important implications for government policies regarding privately provided public goods.

Liberals experience more distress than conservatives. Why? We offer a novel explanation, the social support hypothesis. Maintaining social support and avoiding exclusion are basic human motivations, but people differ in their sensitivity to the threat of social exclusion. Among people high in the personality trait neuroticism, exclusion easily triggers feelings of vulnerability and neediness. The social support hypothesis translates this to politics. Concerned with their own vulnerability, we find that neurotic people prefer policies of care – social welfare and redistribution – but not other left-wing policies. Specifically, it is anxiety – the facet of neuroticism tapping sensitivity to social threats – that drives this link. And it is only for people experiencing exclusion that anxiety predicts support for social welfare. Our results come from two experiments and four representative surveys across two continents. They help to resolve the puzzle of liberal distress while providing a new template for research on personality and politics.

Poverty prevention is a central concern of welfare states, and the redistribution of financial resources has been a major strategy to realise it. The differences in addressees, extent, and conditions of this redistribution have been intensively studied. The relevance of family in poverty prevention policies, though, has hardly been analysed, although all forms of welfare redistribution “factor in” family in one way or another, and particularly so in poverty prevention. We analyse how family membership impacts welfare state redistribution to the poor to identify redistributive logics in terms of family, that is the unequal redistribution of public resources to particular family types. We systematically analyse and present the similarities and differences in these redistributive logics, using the micro-simulation model EUROMOD for the countries of the EU. The results show that poor families benefit from anti-poverty measures in form of additional benefits, but family-related financial obligations often exceed these.

Teenage childbearing is a common incident in developed countries. However, teenage births are much more likely in the USA than in any other industrialized country. Most of these births are delivered by female teenagers from low-income families. The hypothesis put forward here is that the welfare state (a set of redistributive institutions) has a significant influence on teenage childbearing behavior. We develop an economic theory of parental investments and the risky sexual behavior of teenagers. The model is estimated to fit stylized facts about income inequality, intergenerational mobility, and the sexual behavior of teenagers in the USA. The welfare state institutions are introduced via tax and public education expenditure functions derived from US data. In a quantitative experiment, we impose Norwegian taxes and education spending in the economic environment. The Norwegian welfare state institutions go a long way in explaining the differences in teenage birth rates between the USA and Norway.

Crises create opportunities for policy change, yet the extent to which they encourage redistribution is under-researched. We adopt a narrative approach to study how crisis frames are mobilised to support or oppose redistribution, and whether that redistribution is progressive or regressive. A typology of crisis narratives with different redistributive implications is presented: retrenchment narratives promote deregulation and cuts to welfare; Robin Hood narratives advocate progressive redistribution with expanded rights; and restoration narratives favour bringing back the status quo ex ante. We apply the Narrative Policy Framework to examine how Australian parliamentarians used the language of ‘housing crisis’ during and after COVID-19. Despite existing research suggesting crisis narratives mostly support retrenchment, Australia’s pandemic housing debates were dominated by Robin Hood and restoration narratives. We show that party ideology matters for the redistributive content of crisis narratives, but the effect of ideology is mediated by incumbency status. We conclude that shifts in the parliamentary balance of power lead to changes in political parties’ rhetorical support for redistribution.