Social Mobility Perceptions and Inequality Acceptance

This paper examines how perceptions of social mobility affect acceptance of inequality. We conduct a randomized information intervention in a large and heterogeneous sample of Germans to manipulate beliefs about social mobility. While the information treatment renders social mobility perceptions significantly more pessimistic, these more pessimistic perceptions change neither revealed distributional preferences nor support for greater redistribution or education spending. The large sample size allows us to rule out economically meaningful treatment effects. One reason for our result seems to be that respondents do not link low mobility rates to the role of luck and effort.