Abstract
Multidimensionality resulting from ethnic fractionalization is more prevalent in emerging democracies compared with advanced democracies. Ethnic fractionalization hampers the formation of public opinion favoring income redistribution from the better-off to the worse-off. This occurs because although resource transfers to the poor within the same ethnic group can be supported, transfers to the poor from other ethnic groups will be resisted. Previous studies indicated that ethnic fractionalization reduces preferences for income equality; however, they included both emerging and advanced democracies in the same samples. This approach raises concerns about a spurious relationship, particularly because emerging democracies, on an average, have higher ethnic fractionalization and weaker preferences for income equality than advanced democracies. This chapter focuses only on emerging democracies to test the impact of ethnic fractionalization upon individual preferences for income equality. The multilevel analysis, applied separately to the last two waves of the World Values Survey, reveals that ethnic fractionalization primarily reduces preferences for income inequality, although the relationship is nonlinear. The fact that this relationship was observed when the lower-income group status was controlled for suggests that in ethnically heterogeneous societies, resistance to resource transfers to out-groups is deeply embedded, thus cutting across class lines. These results lend qualified support to the conventional understanding of ethnic heterogeneity and preferences for income equality.
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Notes
- 1.
Desmet et al. (2012) measured linguistic diversity in terms of the similarity (not fractionalization) of languages.
- 2.
The universe of redistribution also differs between the religious and secular poor. Huber and Stanig (2011) demonstrated using the using the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) dataset of 26 democracies, 10 of which are emerging democracies, that the secular poor more strongly support redistribution than the religious poor. As the religious poor can benefit from social programs provided by religious organizations, they do not support redistribution policies that target the entire poor population. On the other hand, the secular poor, who are excluded from religious-based social programs, favor redistribution by the government as the only option of social safety net.
- 3.
Brooks and Manza (2007) showed that public opinion is a strong determinant of welfare policy for industrial democracies, and their endogeneity test indicated no contemporaneous feedback from welfare policy to public opinion.
- 4.
The model that included ethnic fractionalization, its square, and the Freedom House/Imputed Polity2 variable could not converge for WVS6.
- 5.
In preliminary analyses, the real per capita GDP change in the year prior to the survey year was also used as a control for the WVS5 and WVS6 datasets but it was not statistically significant.
- 6.
The authors owe this insight to the comment made by Mauricio Bugarin on an earlier draft of this chapter, February 13, 2015.
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Kawanaka, T., Hazama, Y. (2016). Multidimensionality and Preferences for Income Equality. In: Political Determinants of Income Inequality in Emerging Democracies. SpringerBriefs in Economics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0257-1_4
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