"Attitudes towards redistribution have a strong cultural component"

Source: The Economist, June 4th 2009.

I quote from an Economics Focus column based on the work of Erzo Luttmer and Monica Singhal of Harvard University:

Immigrants have typically had their formative experiences in a country with different institutions, benefit systems and attitudes from those of their adopted home. If culture matters, then their attitudes should be different from those of native citizens in similar economic circumstances and closer to those that prevail in their country of origin. Mr Luttmer and Ms Singhal analyse data from the European Social Survey, a biennial multi-country exercise, on the attitudes of over 6,000 immigrants who have moved from one of 32 countries in the survey to another and they find precisely this result.

Even after controlling for income, education and other relevant economic and social factors such as work history and age, views about redistribution in an immigrant’s home country are a strong predictor of his own opinions. Indeed, this measure of “cultural background” explains as much as income levels, and three-fifths as much as income and education combined. These results hold even for immigrants who moved 20 years before they were surveyed; they cannot be attributed to people not having had time to adjust their views.

This is an interesting study, confirming what we would all assume from the history of ethnic politics in the United States.