Does Inequality Harm Democracy? An Empirical Investigation on the UK
Quaderni - Working Paper DSE N° 935
55 Pages Posted: 4 Apr 2014
Date Written: April 3, 2014
Abstract
This paper presents an empirical investigation about the effect of an increase in economic inequality on some aspects of the quality of a democracy. The main novelty of the paper lies in its methodology: it applies to a single country (instead of a pool of countries) - the UK - in a long run perspective. Using survey data, we select three questions and check whether an increase in inequality alters the answers to these questions, subject to other control variables. Another novelty is the use of several measures of inequality (rather than the usual GINI only) both for disentangling what happens in the different parts of the income distribution and for avoiding the dependence of the results on the choice of the indicator. The main finding is that a higher level of income inequality impacts negatively on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and positively on their political participation.
Keywords: income distribution, economic inequality, inequality indices, factor analysis, United Kingdom, quality of democracy, democracy-satisfaction, political discussion, participation into election
JEL Classification: D33, D72, D63, O15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation