Abstract
AbstractThis paper empirically examines the relationship between group income and an individual's preferences for redistribution. First, I develop a theoretical framework where an individual's identity is strengthened by the status of their group. Then, utilizing data from the US General Social Survey, I find evidence that the average incomes of one's ethnic and religious groups are negatively correlated with one's preferences for redistribution. Controlling for household income and a number of other individual‐level characteristics and additional controls, I find that a standard deviation increase in the average income of one's social groups correlates to a weakening of an individual's preferences for redistribution by 7% to 8%. This result is robust to the inclusion of rich controls and alternate measures of group status as well as a number of robustness checks, such as sample restrictions and the use of additional data.
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