Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Who Gets What? The Politics of Income Inequality in the United States

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Who gets what?. is a central question of political contestation in the United States and around the world. Answers to this question can come in a variety of forms. For example, the Civil Rights movement in the United States was about what rights would be given to African Americans, and the abortion debate concerns the values government will authoritatively enforce. But at its heart, .Who gets what?. is a question of material well-being. Essentially, the question is .Who gets the money?. An empirical answer to this question is available in the distribution of income, or income inequality. Income inequality, then, is a key outcome of any political-economic system, and a great deal of research in economics, sociology, and political science has focused on explaining this outcome. Previous research has shown that changes in labor markets, the demographic composition of populations, and wage-setting institutions help to determine income inequality. This project examines these factors, but goes beyond by focusing on how government acts to influence inequality in the United States. Research in political science has suggested that the primary mechanism through which governments influence distributional outcomes is direct redistribution . taxing the wealthy to provide benefits for the middle and lower classes (Bradley et al. 2003; Hibbs and Dennis 1988; Page and Simmons 2000). The first component of the analysis in this project builds on the current state of knowledge by using aggregate time series data to test the connection between the ideological tone of policy and government.s redistributive effect. Previous studies have used partisan control of government as a proxy for policy. In the context of a country like the United States, where party discipline is comparatively weak, partisan control is a noisy indicator of the ideological content of policy. This project provides for more robust analysis by explicitly examining the policies considered and enacted by government. The findings obtained thus far suggest that liberal shifts in policy cause increases in redistribution. The second component of this project considers a relatively unexplored mechanism through which government can influence distributional outcomes . manipulation of economic opportunity. Almost every type of government activity, from environmental or corporate regulation to defense spending, enhances economic opportunities for some groups to the exclusion of others. Inequality is influenced to the extent that the rich or poor are disproportionately advantaged by these activities. This project assesses the distributional influence of government manipulation of economic opportunity by analyzing the connection between government policy and inequality before taxes and transfers. Initial analysis suggests that policy influences inequality as much through manipulation of economic opportunity as through redistribution. The final component of this project consists of interviewing policy elites and requires additional funding for its successful completion. More specifically, funding of this project would provide the ability to reside in Washington, D.C. for approximately four months to conduct interviews of political appointees, high-level civil servants, and interest group leaders whose activities influence distributional policy making and implementation. Given that the question .Who gets what?. is so politically central, distributional considerations are likely central to the thinking of policy elites, and many may have sophisticated conceptions of how government activity influences distributional outcomes. This part of the project would aid in understanding the degree to which policy elites consider distributional outcomes when defining policy options and crafting national policy, as well as inform the empirical aspects of the project.