This article presents a novel explanation why demand for redistribution on average does not respond to information on low
intergenerational mobility. Building on insights from behavioural economics, we expect that incentives to update perceptions
of intergenerational mobility change along the income distribution. Empirically, we conduct a survey experiment in Austria
and show that the average treatment effect of information on perceptions is mostly driven by higher income individuals while
low-income respondents hardly react. We replicate this result for the United States and Germany using data from two closely
related survey experiments (Alesina et al., 2018; Fehr et al., 2022). Thus, the frequently observed unresponsiveness of demand
for redistribution may result because the group which drives the effect on beliefs does not increase demand for redistribution
and may even decrease it. Indeed, despite the strong perception shift in the high-income group, the treatment effects on its
preferences are mostly zero and even negative for certain policies. At the same time, the group with the clearest incentives
to change its redistributive preferences, the low-income group, is systematically less inclined to update its perceptions
and thus their redistributive preferences are mostly unaffected and only partially increased in response to the treatment.
We suggest that different responses to information could be due to motivated beliefs, since high social mobility implies for
low-income earners that effort is more likely to pay off.
Der Privatkonkurs bietet überschuldeten Personen die Möglichkeit, eine Restschuldbefreiung zu erlangen. Von 1995 bis Ende
2021 wurden in Österreich insgesamt etwa 197.000 Privatkonkursanträge gestellt. Die jährliche Zahl der Anträge stieg bis Ende
der 2000er-Jahre kontinuierlich an. Seither lassen sich größere Sprünge in den Fallzahlen beobachten, vor allem im Zusammenhang
mit Reformen und Veränderungen der politischen Rahmenbedingungen, wie etwa in der COVID-19-Krise. In der Analyse zeigen sich
auch Zusammenhänge mit der Konjunktur und der Bevölkerungsdichte, wobei die Konkursquoten vor allem in urbanen Gebieten hoch
sind. Zur Untersuchung detaillierter kausaler Zusammenhänge sowie der Auswirkungen der rezenten Teuerungswelle sind jedoch
vertiefende Analysen erforderlich.
