Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
自身社会阶层认知与地方富裕程度：对再分配偏好的影响
Perceptions of own social class and local affluence: Effects on preferences for redistribution
摘要
This paper studies how perceptions of own social class and local affluence shape preferences for redistribution. We conduct a survey experiment with 1293 respondents in Lima Metropolitana, randomly correcting beliefs either about respondents’ own socio-economic status (SES) under Peru’s official five-class classification, or about the share of affluent households in their district. Misperceptions are strongly asymmetric: about 70% of respondents overestimate their own SES and about 50% overestimate the local share of affluent households. The effects of information, however, are not uniform. The clearest evidence comes from respondents who substantially overestimate local affluence: correcting this belief increases support for redistribution. For own SES, effects are concentrated among respondents who overestimate their position by at least two classes (34% of the relevant sample); among respondents whose misperceptions are smaller, the evidence is weaker. Neither treatment shifts support for a wealth tax, and perceived fairness of the income distribution is largely unaffected. Using geocoded data, we further show that local SES and local affluence are positively associated with respondents’ perceptions, while local inequality itself is only weakly related to redistributive preferences in the control group. The results suggest that corrective information can affect redistributive attitudes when perceived-actual gaps are large, but that these effects depend on the type and magnitude of misperceptions.
中文摘要
本文研究个体对自身社会阶层与本地富裕程度的认知如何塑造再分配偏好。我们在利马都会区对1293名受访者开展了一项调查实验，随机校正受访者关于自身社会经济地位（SES）在秘鲁官方五阶层分类中所处位置的信念，或关于其所在地区富裕家庭占比的信念。认知偏差呈现显著的非对称性：约70%的受访者高估自身SES，约50%的受访者高估本地富裕家庭占比。然而，信息的影响并非一致。最清晰的证据来自大幅高估本地富裕程度的受访者：校正这一信念会提高其对再分配的支持。就自身SES而言，效应集中于将自身地位高估至少两个阶层的受访者（占相关样本的34%）；在认知偏差较小的受访者中，证据较弱。两种处理均未改变对财富税的支持，且收入分配的感知公平性基本未受影响。利用地理编码数据，我们进一步表明，本地SES与本地富裕程度同受访者的认知呈正相关，而本地不平等本身在控制组中与再分配偏好的关联较弱。结果表明，当感知与实际之间的差距较大时，校正性信息能够影响再分配态度，但这些效应取决于认知偏差的类型与幅度。