Immigration Attitudes and White Americans’ Responsiveness to Rising Income Inequality

Abstract

Despite decades of rising inequality, there has been little observed increase in American public support for redistribution. This is puzzling because majorities of Americans profess to be aware of and opposed to high inequality. I argue that this lack of responsiveness is not due to public ignorance of, nor apathy toward, inequality but rather, in part, to negative feelings toward immigrants, a growing, politically salient, and negatively stereotyped “out-group” that is widely viewed as a target of redistributive spending. To test this, I combine data on state-level income inequality with survey data from the 1992 to 2016 Cumulative ANES. I find that growing inequality can prompt support for redistribution but that this depends, in part, on peoples’ immigration attitudes. Overall, these results suggest that immigration has important implications for economic redistribution in an era of high, and rising inequality.