redist2015 {sdamr}

Redistribution of wealth

Description

It is generally found that wealthy people tend to be more opposed to policies to reduce wealth inequalities. This may be unsurprising from a classical economic standpoint, because the material burden of the redistribution of wealth will fall on wealthier people. Wealthier people are also more likely than poorer people to adopt political ideologies that oppose redistribution policies. Dawtry, Sutton, and Sibley (2015) investigated whether, in addition to such factors, “social-sampling processes” lead wealthier people to oppose redistribution policies. Social sampling is the idea that people (partly) base inferences on their social surroundings. Wealthier people tend to live in more affluent areas and move in wealthier social circles. This may bias their view of the world, where wealthier people estimate the general population to be wealthier (with less of a gap between the wealthy and the poor) than it really is.

Usage

redist2015

Format

A data frame with 305 rows and 12 variables:

id

unique ID number for each participant

gender

only "male" or "female" could be answered by the looks of it

age

participant age in years

income

yearly household income (in units of $1,000)

pol_att

political leaning from 1="Extremely Liberal" to 9="Extremely Conservative"

PD_mean

estimate average household income in the general US population

PD_gini

GINI index computed for a subjective distribution of wealth in the general US population. The GINI index is a measure of wealth inequality; higher numbers mean more inequality

PD_fair

Answer to the question "To what extent do you feel that household incomes are fairly–unfairly distributed across the US population?" on a scale from 1="Extremely Fair" to 9 = "Extremely Unfair".

PD_sat

Answer to the question "How satisfied–dissatisfied are you with the way in which household incomes are distributed across the US population?" on a scale from 1="Extremely satisfied" to 9="Extremely dissatisfied".

SC_mean

estimate average household income in the participant's social circles

SC_gini

(subjective) inequality in the participant's social circles

redist

support for wealth redistribution policies (average of four items, higher scores indicate stronger support).

Details

In Experiment 1a of Dawtry, Sutton, and Sibley (2015), they assessed income and opinions for n=305 online U.S. participants recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

Source

https://osf.io/3mftr/. See also Dawtry, Rael J., Robbie M. Sutton, and Chris G. Sibley. 2015. “Why Wealthier People Think People Are Wealthier, and Why It Matters: From Social Sampling to Attitudes to Redistribution.” Psychological Science 26 (9): 1389–1400. doi:10.1177/0956797615586560.