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Socio-Economic Review Advance Access published online on March 1, 2006
Socio-Economic Review, doi:10.1093/ser/mwl002
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© The Author 2006. 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

Article

Inequality and the demand for redistribution: are the assumptions of the new growth theory valid?1

Malte Lübker 1 *

1 International Labour Office, Geneva, Switzerland

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Malte Lübker, E-mail: luebker{at}ilo.org


  Abstract

One prominent strand of the new growth theory has identified the political process as a potential channel to link high inequality to lower long-term growth. Several authors have argued that (i) higher inequality causes higher demand for redistribution, (ii) which leads to greater redistribution and higher taxes, and (iii) which is in turn harmful to growth. This article addresses the first step of this argument, a proposition that has been widely accepted as a stylized fact. Using cross section data for 26 countries from the ISSP's module on Social Inequality, it presents an empirical test that yields no support for the idea that public support for redistribution rises with inequality across countries. This finding is attributed to the influence of social justice norms that vary greatly between groups of culturally similar countries.

Keywords: income distribution; redistribution; new growth theory; rational choice; political sociology.
1 The views expressed in this paper are those of the author, and should not be attributed to the ILO or its constituents.
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