Working Paper: NBER ID: w29245
Authors: Alberto Alesina; Matteo F. Ferroni; Stefanie Stantcheva
Abstract: This paper studies how beliefs about racial inequalities and their causes vary and shape support for race-targeted and redistribution policies among Black and white Americans, including both adults and teenagers. We collect original large-scale survey data to provide new evidence on perceptions, attitudes, and policy views on racial issues and study the causal impact of information on policy views. We highlight significant heterogeneity along racial and partisan lines in perceived racial gaps in income and mobility. Yet, the biggest discrepancies are in how people explain the existence of these gaps, i.e., their perceived causes. White Democratic and Black respondents are much more likely to attribute racial inequities to systemic factors, such as ad- verse past and present circumstances, and want to act on them with race-targeted and general redistribution policies. White Republicans are more likely to attribute racial gaps to individual-based factors, such as individual effort or actions. These views are already deeply entrenched in teenagers, based on their race and their parents' political affiliation. A policy decomposition shows that the perceived causes of racial inequities are the strongest predictors of support for race-targeted or redistribution policies, a finding confirmed by the experimental results.
Keywords: racial inequities; redistribution policies; systemic racism; perceptions; experimental data
JEL Codes: D31; D72; H23; H24; H41; J15; P16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Information provided through experimental treatments (C90) | Respondents' perceptions of racial inequities (J15) |
| Exposure to information about historical earnings gap and systemic racism (J70) | Shift in views regarding causes of racial inequities (I24) |
| Partisan identity (D72) | Attribution of racial inequities to systemic factors or individual actions (J15) |
| Respondents' perceptions of racial inequities (J15) | Support for race-targeted policies (J15) |