Patience moderates the class cleavage in demand for redistribution

Abstract

Previous studies on class voting have yielded mixed results linking income and demand for redistribution. Why do some poor people oppose redistribution, while some rich people support it? This article argues that an individual's level of patience, an important personal characteristic that influences how people calculate immediate and distinct outcomes, may moderate the effect of class on redistributive preference. In a one-shot game, redistribution between the rich and the poor is zero sum. When people extend their time horizons, however, the poor see the possibility of upward mobility, while the rich emphasize future losses, such as unemployment and economic instability. Consistent with the hypotheses, analyses of the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and a representative Taiwanese dataset from 2016 reveal a clear class cleavage in demand for redistribution among impatient poor and rich respondents, but the cleavage between their patient counterparts diminished. This pattern of convergence extends previous studies on upward mobility and risk perception theory.