Collective Negative Shocks and Preferences for Redistribution: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis in Germany

Luna Bellani, Andrea Fazio () and Francesco Scervini

No 14969, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using new data from a three-wave panel survey administered in Germany between May 2020 and May 2021, this paper studies the impact of a negative shock affecting every strata of the population, such as the development of COVID-19, on preferences for redistribution. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous change in severity of the infection rate at the county level, we show that, contrary to some theoretical expectations, the worse the crisis, the lower the support for redistribution of our respondents. We provide further suggestive evidence that this is not driven by a decrease in inequality aversion, but this might be the result of a decrease in trust in the institutions who are in charge of redistributive policies.

Keywords: inequality aversion; preference for redistribution; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - revised version published in: Journal of Economic Inequality , 2024, 68 (2-3), 509-533.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14969.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Collective negative shocks and preferences for redistribution: Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Germany (2023)
Working Paper: Collective negative shocks and preferences for redistribution: Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Germany (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14969

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().