Immigration vs. Poverty: Causal Impact on Demand for Redistribution in a Survey Experiment

Abstract

We investigate how preferences over both the financing and the provision of redistributive policies are affected by immigration and poverty. We find that information about immigration has a negative impact on demanded redistributive taxation among middle income respondents and a positive one among low income earners, while information about poverty has no impact. On the provision side, middle income respondents increase desired public expenditure in response to both immigration and poverty, while low income respondents reduce desired public expenditure in response to immigration. These heterogeneities are respectively consistent and weakly consistent with protectionist reactions to immigration and poverty, and show that understanding the relationship between immigration, poverty and demand for redistribution requires in-depth investigations by population segment.

Keywords: immigration, poverty, redistribution, survey experiment

JEL Classification: D31, D63, H53, J15