11:00 - 13:15
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Rosalind Shorrocks
Discussant/s:
Nils Steiner
Meeting Room D

Maria Grasso, Rosalind Shorrocks
Gender Gaps in Preferences for Social Spending and Redistribution: A Comparative Analysis of Welfare Systems

Daiki Kishishita, Atsushi Yamagishi, Tomoko Matsumoto
Self-Perceptions of Income-Ability Gap and Preferences for Redistribution

Maurice Dunaiski, Janne Tukiainen
Does income transparency affect support for redistribution? Evidence from Finland’s Tax Day

André Walter
Does Tax Competition Undermine Support for Redistribution?
Does income transparency affect support for redistribution? Evidence from Finland’s Tax Day
Maurice Dunaiski 1, Janne Tukiainen 2, 3
1 London School of Economics
2 VATT Institute for Economic Research
3 University of Turku

The disconnect between rising inequality and lack of support for redistribution in Western democracies raises the question of whether specific policy interventions can shift demand for redistribution. This paper examines whether income transparency - the public release of citizens' income information - affects support for redistribution. We take advantage of a quasi-experiment in Finland, where every year on the so-called "tax day", the authorities release income information on Finland's top-earners to the public. To identify the causal effect of the tax day we compare respondents who took part in the European Social Survey shorty before and after the event. We find that the tax day increases income comparisons and perceptions that earnings of the top 10% are unfair, but that public support for redistribution remains largely unaffected. A notable exception are top-earners (who are the focus of the tax day) and young people (who adjust their perceived income status more than other age groups). Our results highlight the scope conditions of previous survey- and field experiments, and suggest that increasing exposure to inequality through a real-world policy (rather than experimental treatments) may trigger only marginal changes in support for redistribution.