INCOME INEQUALITY AND MASS POLARIZATION A Cross Country Analysis of the Relationship Between Income Inequality and Polarizationin Attitudes to Economic Redistribution

Abstract

More and more political attention has, in recent years, been directed towards the rise in income inequality that many western countries have experienced during the last decades. Among the questions asked by political scientists is what the possible political causes and consequences of this development are? One possible consequence that is sometimes referred to is that it threatens the unity and stability of a country: that it creates an “us and them”. This could, as some have argued, manifest itself as increased political polarization. There is by now a number of studies done on the relationship between income inequality and political polarization. This study adds to these by analyzing the relationship between income inequality and how polarized the public’s attitudes to redistribution are in 74 countries throughout the world. It finds that there is in fact a strong correlation between income inequality and polarization across countries. A multilevel analysis is then performed at the micro level to explore possible explanations for this correlation. The results from the analysis show that it cannot, as some previous research have argued, be explained by greater differences in attitudes between high and low income earners. Instead, it is differences within each income group, or throughout the income distribution, that is greater in more unequal countries. Finally, the study uses the longitudinal nature of the World Value Survey and European Value Study to perform an analysis over time, where it is shown that changes in income inequality has not lead to subsequent changes inpolarization.