Distributive justice beliefs and support for income redistribution in Europe

Political theory and political philosophy formulate several distributive justice principles according to which a fair society should be organized. Individual people may have different personal beliefs about the importance of these principles. The particular principle(s) individuals ascribe to will determine their attitudes towards particular economic measures and policies. Concerning income redistribution attitudes, two distributive principles are essential. Firstly, the idea of equality posits that a society is fair when economic outcomes (i.e. income and wealth) are equally distributed among all its members. Secondly, the equity principle suggests that a fair society distributes economic outcomes among society members proportionally to their individual input/effort. Therefore, it is expected that people preferring the equality principle will be supporters of income redistribution (as it leads to more equal distribution of disposable incomes). People preferring the equity principle should be more tolerant of stratified disposable incomes which reflect the individual effort. This paper aims to study how these two distributive justice norms impact attitudes towards income redistribution in Europe. Firstly, the paper studies which of these two distributive justice norms is a stronger correlate of pro-redistributive attitudes. Secondly, we analyze whether these norms' importance with respect to support for income redistribution is the same across European countries. Lastly, the paper studies factors which may help explain cross-country differences. This work in progress employs European Social Survey data from Justice and fairness module (round 9, 2018). While controlling for several socioeconomic status variables, our results demonstrate that the equality principle is a very strong predictor of pro-redistributive attitudes. Individuals who believe in the equality principle ceteris paribus support redistribution much more than individuals who oppose this principle. The role of the equality principle is much more crucial than that of the equity principle. Although the effect of equality norm on these attitudes is positive in all of the analyzed European countries, the strength of the association varies significantly across countries (as shown by both a bivariate aggregate analysis and two-level random slope model). The two-level model with a cross-level interaction suggests that the observed cross-country variation may be explained by existing inequalities of disposable incomes. In countries with low to moderate income inequalities, the role of the equality principle is much more important than in high-inequality countries.