Economic Inequality and Public Support for Redistribution in Europe: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis

The relationship between economic inequality and public demand for redistribution has been studied for some decades now. Most empirical studies in this field refer to the median-voter hypothesis, which claims that higher inequality will increase demand for redistribution. Yet, the empirical results remain largely inconclusive. In replicating and expanding Schmidt-Catran (2016; https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwu030), we provide a statistical analysis of the association between inequality and demand for redistribution, using linear mixed-effects models, which allow for the simultaneous estimation of cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships. We test our hypotheses using comparative longitudinal individual-level data from 2002 to 2018 and an extensive set of country-level control variables. We also apply a variety of robustness checks. Our results suggest that higher inequality does increase public demand for redistribution, but it does not have the expected positive interaction effects with individuals' relative income position. Implications of these results and directions for future research are also discussed.