Dr. Scott Matthews, Department of Political Science, will speak.

 Do electorates hold governments accountable for the distribution of economic welfare? A huge research literature on “economic voting” establishes that voters reward governments for economic growth, while punishing governments that preside over periods of economic decline. We know much less, however, about how electorates evaluate governments that deliver increases – or decreases – in economic inequality. This presentation describes a program of research that examines how electorates in the OECD countries respond to alternative distributions of income gains and losses. Drawing on individual-level electoral data and aggregate election results across 15 advanced democracies, the research examines whether lower- and middle-income voters defend their distributive interests by punishing governments for concentrating income gains among the rich. Overall, the research finds no indication that non-rich voters punish rising inequality, and substantial evidence that electorates positively reward the concentration of aggregate income growth at the top. The results suggest that governments commonly face incentives systematically skewed in favour of inegalitarian economic outcomes. At the same time, the electorate’s tolerance of rising inequality may have its limits: the pattern of “class-biased economic voting” diminishes as the income shares of the rich grow in magnitude.