Voting for income redistribution in a dynamic-income experiment

We design a laboratory experiment to investigate how income redistribution preferences respond to income mobility, income source, own income level and ideological beliefs. Own income is by far the strongest determinant of voting behavior for redistribution. High- (low-) income earners vote for low (high) rates of redistribution regardless of how their income was determined and of their previous-stage income. An intriguing element in our experimental design is that middle-income individuals have no such self-interest in the voting outcome, since their income remains unchanged regardless of the redistribution rate. We find these participants’ voting displays an affinity with low-income earners, which points to individuals’ predisposition to favoring high levels of redistribution. However, their relatively high support for redistribution is situational: it disappears when they have high incomes.