*Presentation at Waseda University, October 29, 2018
This presentation aims to show (1) a set of questionnaire items to measure redistributive policy preference using concrete and whole-picture type indices, which was adopted by a Japanese nationwide survey, (2) the resulted data, and (3) the perspectives for future research of our interest. We emphasize the importance of measuring individuals’ policy preference using concrete-level indices obtained from respondents looking at the whole picture of a society.
As redistributive preference measures, most studies in literature have utilized “yes/no” responses to some slogan in a natural language. However, when people are to find a political solution in debate on public policy, if it is desirable to make a compromise over concrete levels instead of natural-language slogans, then plausibly we should know how people’s preferences differ in concrete levels of a policy. In other words, we should know how strong/weak redistribution policy people prefer, instead of how strongly/weakly people agree with statements for redistribution.
There already exist some studies that deal with such concrete-level indices. Relative to such studies, we aim to contribute by letting respondents answer looking at the whole picture of a society and considering the amount every household should have after redistribution. If it is easier for people to make a compromise about a general status of a society, than about only part of societal status, e.g. about some specific interests, then we should utilize the whole-picture type indices of policy preferences.
In the presentation, first, we introduce this kind of questionnaire items, where respondents answer the desirable amounts of tax and benefit for each household, and also the unemployment benefit, in a fictional society. The items also measure the perceived external effect of the policy on economic growth. The items were included in JHPS survey conducted in Japan in 2011 and 2012. Second, we show some results as well as descriptive characteristics of the obtained data. Interestingly, we find no evidence that those with lower socio-economic status prefer stronger equalization policy; on the contrary, we find that the better-educated tend to prefer stronger equalization policy.
If time allows, we are to show some examples of possible analyses using the data. One of them is to identify the two factors forming the policy preference, namely (a) normative evaluation criteria over societal status and (b) perceived fact on externality of policy. Another is to determine “collective preference order” among various statuses of society, by knowing people’s normative evaluation on various sets of concrete indices about a whole society, and then aggregating such evaluations collectively.
Our presentation is open to discussion, not necessarily coming with a well-defined framing as an academic paper.