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Socio-Economic Review Advance Access originally published online on August 22, 2007
Socio-Economic Review 2008 6(1):35-68; doi:10.1093/ser/mwm006
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Inequality, public opinion and redistribution

Lane Kenworthy1 and Leslie McCall2

1 Department of Sociology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
2 Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA

Correspondence: lane.kenworthy{at}arizona.edu

According to the ‘median-voter’ hypothesis, greater inequality in the market distribution of earnings or income tends to produce greater generosity in redistributive policy. We outline the steps in the causal chain specified by the hypothesis and attempt to assess these steps empirically. Prior studies focusing on cross-country variation have found little support for the median-voter model. We examine over-time trends in eight nations during the 1980s and 1990s. Here too the median-voter hypothesis appears to have little utility.

Key Words: welfare state • redistribution • inequality • public opinion


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