Economic experiences , target-specific beliefs and demands for redistribution

Attitudes towards redistribution depend, among other factors, on beliefs about the role of effort and luck in determining income. Those who believe in the importance of luck and exogenous circumstances support more redistribution than those who believe in the importance of effort. Fong (2016) shows that beliefs and demands have a target-specific component. Beliefs about why the poor are poor are different from beliefs about why the rich are rich, and the former belief has stronger effects on demands for transfers to the poor while the latter has stronger effects on demands for taxation of the rich. We use questions that we proposed to the SOEP 2014 wave to examine beliefs about the determinants of incomes, and how these affect attitudes towards increasing taxes on those with high incomes and increasing transfers to those with low incomes.