Abstract
People support more redistribution from the rich to the poor if they believe that poverty and wealth are caused by exogenous factors rather than factors under volitional control. However, previous research tells us little, if anything, about what types of beliefs about causes of income matter most. This paper i) introduces a distinction between general beliefs about causes of income (which characterize the whole economy) and target-specific beliefs about causes of income (which characterize specific social categories that are affected by a redistributive policy), ii) analyzes the effects of target-specific beliefs on individual demands for redistribution in a model of inequity aversion, and iii) uses data from a 1998 Gallup Organization survey and the General Social Survey to show that target-specific beliefs have much larger effects on support for redistribution than general beliefs.
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