The rich tend to support policies favoring the affluent and are over-represented among both voters and legislators. This paper investigates whether these correlations reflect causal effects of wealth by leveraging random, positive wealth shocks in the form of lottery prizes. Compared to suitably matched controls, large-prize winners are no more likely to cast votes in national elections or run for political office. We also find no significant effects of parents’ lottery winnings on their children’s political participation. But winners of large lottery prizes become more negative toward taxes on wealth, real estate and inheritances. Although we do not detect any statistically significant effects on other political preferences, effects tend to go in the direction of a more right-wing political orientation. We find no evidence that lottery wealth changes moral values or strengthen beliefs in the importance of hard work for success in life.
Authors
Anton Brännlund, David Cesarini, Karl-Oskar Lindgren, Erik Lindqvist, Sven Oskarsson, Robert Östling
- Acknowledgements & Disclosure
- We thank Agneta Berge and Hari Jayashankar for excellent research assistance. Fredrik Bergdahl and many seminar participants provided helpful feedback at various stages of the project. The study was supported by the Swedish Research Council (421-2011-2139 and 2022-02686), Handelsbanken’s Research Foundations (P2011:0032:1), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (P15-0514:1) and the Ragnar Söderberg Foundation (E4/17). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3386/w32777
- Pages
- 39
- Published in
- United States of America
Table of Contents
- NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES 1
- POCKETBOOK POLITICS THE IMPACT OF WEALTH ON POLITICAL PREFERENCES AND PARTICIPATION 1
- Anton Brännlund David Cesarini Karl-Oskar Lindgren Erik Lindqvist Sven Oskarsson Robert Östling 1
- Working Paper 32777 httpwww.nber.orgpapersw32777 1
- NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02138 August 2024 1
- Anton Brännlund anton.brannlundstatsvet.uu.se 2
- Department of Government Uppsala University P.O. Box 514 SE-751 20 Uppsala Sweden 2
- David Cesarini Department of Economics New York University 19 West 4th Street Room 511 New York NY 10012 and NBER dac12nyu.edu 2
- Karl-Oskar Lindgren karl-oskar.lindgrenstatsvet.uu.se 2
- Department of Government Uppsala University P.O. Box 514 SE-751 20 Uppsala Sweden 2
- Erik Lindqvist Swedish Institute for Social Research SOFI Stockholm University SE-106 91 Stockholm S erik.lindqvistsofi.su.se 2
- Sven Oskarsson Department of Government Uppsala University P.O. Box 514 SE-751 20 Sweden sven.oskarssonstatsvet.uu.se 2
- Uppsala 2
- Robert Östling Department of Economics Stockholm School of Economics P.O. Box 6501 SE-113 83 2
- Stockholm Sweden robert.ostlinghhs.se 2
- 1 Introduction 3
- 2 Data and Identification Strategy 6
- 2.1 Lottery Data 6
- 2.2 Survey Data 7
- 2.3 Political Participation Data 8
- 2.4 Identification Strategy 9
- 2.5 Exogeneity Tests 11
- 2.6 Representativeness and External Validity 12
- 3 Political Preferences 13
- 3.1 Robustness 16
- 3.2 Heterogenous Effects 18
- 3.3 Additional Outcomes 20
- 3.4 Benchmarking Effect Sizes 22
- 4 Political Participation 24
- 4.1 Turnout 24
- 4.2 Political Candidacy 28
- 5 Political Partisanship Post Hoc 30
- 6 Concluding Discussion 32
- References 34
