Inequality in life expectancy: perception and consequences for redistribution policy

收入和财富的不平等与非经济领域的不平等密切相关--特别是在健康和预期寿命方面：富裕的人往往活得更健康和更长寿。人们在多大程度上意识到预期寿命中的这些社会经济差异？经济政策应该如何反应？再分配政策应该对那些在预期寿命方面被额外剥夺的穷人更加慷慨吗？或者，相反，政策是否应该减少再分配，以便为不得不为寿命更长的高收入家庭提供额外资金？当政策设计者忽视或误解预期寿命的社会经济差异时，福利后果是什么？虽然这些问题与社会、科学和政治高度相关，但现有文献中没有对它们进行研究。我们采用实证和理论相结合的方法来解决这些研究问题。在实证阶段，我们进行了一项具有代表性的调查，以记录德国人口预期寿命的社会经济差异，并将这些感知与实际数据进行比较。此外，我们还实证检验了预期寿命的不平等是否会加强对再分配的支持。通过对预期寿命的社会经济分布的认知进行调查实验和产生实验差异，我们探索了预期寿命的不平等认知和对各种政策工具的偏好之间的因果联系。借助于我们的实证结果，我们在项目的理论阶段对最优政策设计进行了研究。我们将预期寿命的社会经济异质性引入到规范的Mirrlees税收模型中，从理论和定量两个方面刻画了最优再分配政策。特别是，我们考虑了预期寿命的实际社会经济差异，预期寿命的感知社会经济差异，以及感知的差异对再分配的社会偏好的影响。据我们所知，我们的项目是第一个在代表性调查中记录预期寿命的社会经济差异的项目，b)将政策偏好与预期寿命的社会经济差异联系起来，c)在预期寿命的社会经济差异的背景下分析最佳再分配政策。

Inequality in income and wealth is closely linked with inequality in non-economic domains—in particular regarding health and life expectancy: well-off individuals tend to live healthier and longer lives. To what extent are individuals aware of these socioeconomic differences in life expectancy? How should economic policy react? Should redistribution policy become more generous towards the poor who are additionally deprived in terms of life expectancy? Or, to the contrary, should policy become less redistributive in order to provide extra funds to high-income households who have to finance a longer lifespan? What are the welfare consequences when policy designers ignore or misperceive the socioeconomic differences in life expectancy? Although these questions are highly relevant for society, science and politics, they have not been studied in the existing literature.We address these research questions with a combination of empirical and theoretical methods. In the empirical stage, we carry out a representative survey to document the perceived socioeconomic differences in life expectancy in the German population and compare these perceptions to actual data. Further, we empirically test whether inequality in life expectancy strengthens the support for redistribution. By conducting a survey experiment and generating experimental variation in perceptions of the socioeconomic distribution of life expectancy, we explore the causal link between inequality perceptions in life expectancy and preferences for various policy instruments. With the help of our empirical findings, we study optimal policy design in the theoretical stage of the project. We introduce socioeconomic heterogeneity in life expectancy into the canonical Mirrleesian taxation model and characterize the optimal redistribution policy both theoretically and quantitatively. In particular, we account for the actual socioeconomic differences in life expectancy, the perceived socioeconomic differences in life expectancy, and the impact of the perceived differences on the social preference for redistribution. To the best of our knowledge, our project is the first to a) document the perceived socioeconomic differences in life expectancy in a representative survey, b) connect policy preferences to the perceived socioeconomic differences in life expectancy, c) analyse optimal redistribution policy in the context of socioeconomic differences in life expectancy.