不平等、再分配需求和特定群体的公共产品：印度的调查实验（英）

Policy Research Working Paper10505(Perceptions of ) Inequality, Demand for Redistribution, and Group-Specific Public GoodsA Survey Experiment in IndiaMaurizio Bussolo Akshay Dixit South Asia RegionOffice of the Chief EconomistJune 2023 Public Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure Authorized Produced by the Research Support TeamAbstractThe Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.Policy Research Working Paper 10505This paper uses data from a survey of 116,061 households in India to study people’s beliefs about inequality and demand for redistribution. The findings show that a household’s beliefs about inequality, implied by the perception of their position on the income distribution, is negatively correlated with support for reducing inequality. This is relevant since there are significant differences between where individuals believe their household stands and their actual position, with the gap between perceived and actual position exceed-ing two deciles on average. Despite these large differences, informing individuals of their household’s position on the income distribution has no discernible effect on support for reducing inequality. The paper posits that demand for redistribution may be unresponsive to this information because it is based on exclusively on household’s income and does not account for the sharing of resources within communities. In communities where group-specific public goods, such as religious and social goods, are present, class antagonism and redistribution are mitigated by community solidarity. Households benefit from these goods, and such benefits alter the individuals’ beliefs of inequality. Consis-tent with this prediction, the average individual perceives their household as richer in districts with a greater supply of religious or social goods. The sharing of resources within religious or ethnic groups can shape perceptions of the income distribution and reduce support for redistribution within these groups, and thus requires serious consideration in studies of inequality.This paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, South Asia Region. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at mbussolo@worldbank.org and at akshay_dixit@g.harvard.edu. (Perceptions of) Inequality, Demand for Redistribution, and Group-Specific Public Goods: A S urvey Experiment in India Maurizio Bussolo1 Akshay Dixit2 JEL Classification: D31, D63, H24, H41, I30, Z13 Keywords: Community; Public goods; Inequality; Distribution; Biased Perceptions. Acknowledgments: We thank Ravi Kanbur for encouraging us to write this paper, participants at the Comparative Politics workshop at Harvard University for helpful comments, and Nayantara Sarma for her active contributions to the research. We are grateful to Mahesh Vyas and Kaushik Krishnan for fielding questions on inequality and redistribution as a part of the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) in July-August 2021, and to the India Country Management Unit for their useful comments. 1 The World Bank, mbussolo@worldbak.org 2 Harvard University, akshay_dixit@g.harvard.edu 2 1. Introduction How does an individual’s perception of their position on the income distribution influence their beliefs about inequality and their demand for redistribution? What shapes this perception of one’s relative position in the first place? A growing literature examines these questions (Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote 2001; Alesina, Stantcheva, and Teso 2018; Benabou and Ok 2001; Benabou and Tirole 2006; Bussolo, Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Giolbas and Torre 2021; Iversen and Soskice 2020; Mo and Conn 2018). However, existing research has studied them mainly in high income countries. India remains surprisingly understudied, considering that it is a populous democracy that harbors a deeply unequal society. We present results from the first nationwide study of perceptions of the income distribution in India. Our data comes from a survey of 116,06