Social mobility perceptions and inequality acceptance

Abstract

This paper examines how the perceived importance of family background affects distributional preferences using two large-scale survey experiments. In the first experiment, we randomly inform respondents about the relationship between parental income and economic success later in life, making their social mobility perceptions more pessimistic. However, this changes neither revealed distributional preferences nor pro-social behavior toward the rich and poor. The second experiment shows that respondents do not account for parental influence on economic success when making (re-)distribution decisions, suggesting that people view parental influence as a legitimate reason to justify some inequality. This can explain why distributional preferences are immune to changes in perceptions of social mobility.