Public Opinion about Income Inequality

Abstract

Abstract: European egalitarianism is confirmed by a propensity to agree with government intervention to reduce income inequality. This propensity is driven by lower educational level, societal dissatisfaction, liberal partisanship, and economic anxiety. These findings are realized with data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey.

The regression of agreement propensities on true explanatory values is made possible by correcting for measurement error in explanatory scores. This resolves two major problems in propensity regression, i.e. errors in variables and imputation errors. These resolutions are attained by a pure randomization theory that places fixed measurement error in design-based regression. This type of regression (versus model-based regression) is used by statistical agencies and polling organizations for sampling large populations.