Public Acceptance of International Redistribution in High-Income Countries

In international negotiations, Global South countries demand North-to-South transfers: indeed, redirecting just 1% of high-income countries’ output to low-income countries (LICs) would mechanically double their national income.

In this paper, Adrien Fabre examines the support for global redistribution policies through an original survey representative of the population in eleven high-income countries (the United States, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and seven European countries). While previous academic surveys had already shown majority public support for global climate and redistributive policies, this new study confirms previous results by surveying more countries, testing a wider range of policies, including variants that are international but not global, and running experiments to assess the robustness of support.

KEY FINDINGS

• There is majority acceptance in every country for nearly all global redistribution policies tested, including those that would redistribute 5 percent of global income or entail personal costs for respondents.
• Global inequality is not a salient concern, but it is perceived as a significant injustice.
• Political programs are more likely to be preferred if they address global inequality.
• An information treatment shows that support for global policies causally increases among respondents who perceive them as likely; an effect opposite to warm glow.
• Support for international policies decreases only slightly as country coverage shrinks.
• Overall, the results reinforce previous findings and suggest that a broad coalition of countries could feasibly advance sustainable development.

Acceptance of plausible global redistribution policies (Percentage of Somewhat or Strongly support among non-Indifferent responses).

AUTHORS

• Adrien Fabre, CNRS, CIRED (Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement)

PRESS

• press[at]wid.world