IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/v24y2024i1p285-300n9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimating the Socio-Economic Status of the U.S. Capitol Insurrectionists

Author

Listed:
  • Komlos John

    (Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, University of Munich, Ludwigstr. 33-IV, 80539 Munich, Germany)

Abstract

The income of those who attacked the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2021 and were subsequently arrested is estimated for the first time using the annual per-capita income in the neighborhood of their residence as a proxy measure. Contrary to common wisdom, we find that two groups were conspicuously underrepresented from this subset of the insurrectionists (N = 933): the utterly poor (whose estimated per- capita income was below $15 K), as well as those whose estimated annual per-capita income was above $50 K per annum. Fully 83.3 % of the arrestees resided in areas with a (five-year average) annual per capita income between $20 K and $50 K (in 2020 prices). This finding dovetails with the argument that the right-wing populist movement in the U.S. is driven largely by the struggling lower-middle class who have been left behind by the transition from an industrial to a knowledge economy. The public policy implications point to the amelioration of this distributional deficit.

Suggested Citation

  • Komlos John, 2024. "Estimating the Socio-Economic Status of the U.S. Capitol Insurrectionists," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 24(1), pages 285-300, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:24:y:2024:i:1:p:285-300:n:9
    DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2023-0255
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2023-0255
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bejeap-2023-0255?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:24:y:2024:i:1:p:285-300:n:9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.