Changing Public Attitudes to Inequality, Poverty and Redistribution: Longitudinal Analysis Collaborative Project with the Scottish Government.

苏格兰政府有一个强有力的反贫困政策议程，基于社会投资和包容性增长（苏格兰政府，2013年，2015年），并致力于消除儿童贫困和减少不平等（2017年儿童贫困（苏格兰）法案）。这一议程的大部分内容得到了苏格兰议会各党派的支持。事实上，不平等现在是一个全球性问题。联合国可持续发展目标的目标10呼吁世界各国政府采取紧急行动减少不平等。然而，作为一个富裕国家，英国的贫困和不平等程度相对较高，而近年来在减少贫困和不平等方面几乎没有取得进展。苏格兰也未能幸免于这种模式，尽管它利用所得税下放的机会，引入了一套更具进步性的税阶和税率（《2016年苏格兰法案》），而新冠肺炎疫情又重新引发了关于不平等与健康之间关系的长期争论。因此，如果要减少贫困和不平等，未来可能需要政府采取进一步行动。然而，这种行动的合法性和有效性至少部分取决于公众对促进更公平和更平等社会的政策的同意和支持。拟议的助学金将利用自1983年以来英国社会态度调查和自1999年以来平行的苏格兰社会态度调查收集的关于这一主题的丰富数据遗产，将两者结合起来，对旨在减少贫困和不平等的政策的支持和反对来源进行全面研究。这项研究将参考当前学术文献中的主要理论观点。它将扩展和更新苏格兰政府分析服务公司在2015年发表的先前分析。理性理论将表明，谁支持谁反对再分配和其他减少贫困和不平等的措施相对简单-那些在收入和财富方面处于底层的人可能会支持这些措施，而那些相对富裕的人则会倾向于反对他们这表明，采取减少贫穷和不平等的措施总是可能造成分裂，并成为社会和政治分歧的主题，而那些高收入和富有的人可能会采取阻碍政策的行为，但最近的学术研究表明，这种情况过于明显。特别是，不平等产生的社会影响（如犯罪和不安全增加）比物质资产的边际增加带来的效用更令富裕者关切。因此，对再分配政策的态度可能与收入和财富有曲线关系，在高度不平等的社会中，收入和财富分配的顶层和底层得到的支持往往最高，同时，研究还表明，对福利和其他除贫措施的态度也受到沙漠概念的影响，其中一些接受支助的人（如残疾人）被认为比其他人（如单亲）更“值得”得到支助。这种沙漠的概念在那些社会观念保守的人中更为常见--他们的教育程度往往较低，因此收入也较低。与此同时，我们不能假定那些不太富裕的人一定意识到他们社会中的不平等程度。简而言之，对扶贫措施的支持率未必如我们所预期的那么高，原因是多方面的。这些因素表明，人们对福利的态度不仅取决于物质环境，还取决于社会观念和价值观。这些观念和价值观的性质和分布不能被视为理所当然，可能会随着时间的推移和不同的社会群体而变化。

The Scottish Government has a strong anti-poverty policy agenda, based on social investment and inclusive growth (Scottish Government, 2013, 2015), and is committed to ending child poverty and reducing inequality (Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017). Much of this agenda is backed by all parties in the Scottish Parliament. Indeed, inequality is now a global concern. Goal 10 of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals calls on governments around the world to take urgent action to reduce inequality. Yet the UK has relatively high levels of poverty and inequality for a rich country, while little progress has been made in recent years to reduce them. Scotland has not been immune from this pattern, albeit it has taken advantage of the devolution of income tax to introduce a somewhat more progressive set of bands and rates (Scotland Act 2016), while the coronavirus pandemic has revived a long-standing debate about the relationship between inequality and health.Further governmental action is therefore likely to be necessary in future if poverty and inequality are to be reduced. Yet the legitimacy and effectiveness of such action will depend in part at least on public consent and support for policies that promote a fairer and more equal society. The proposed studentship would utilise the rich legacy of data on the subject that has been collected by the British Social Attitudes survey since 1983 and the parallel Scottish Social Attitudes survey since 1999, which will be combined to undertake a comprehensive study of the sources of support and opposition to policies designed to reduce poverty and inequality. The study would be informed by the key theoretical perspectives in the current academic literature. It would expand and update the previous analysis that Scottish Government Analytical Services published in 2015.Rational theory would suggest that who supports and who opposes redistribution and other measures to reduce poverty and inequality is relatively straightforward - those towards the bottom of the pile in terms of income and wealth can be expected to support such measures while those who are relatively well off will be inclined to oppose them. This suggests that the pursuit of measures to reduce poverty and inequality is always likely to be divisive, and be the subject of social and political disagreement, while those with high incomes and wealth may engage in behaviours that will frustrate the policy.However, recent academic research suggests that this picture is too stark. In particular, inequality has social effects (such as increased crime and insecurity) that are of greater concern to the better off than the utility that they derive from a marginal increase in material assets. Consequently, attitudes towards redistributive policies may have a curvilinear relationship with income and wealth, whereby in highly unequal societies support tends be highest towards the top and the bottom of the income and wealth distributions.At the same time, research has also indicated that attitudes towards welfare and other anti-poverty measures are also influenced by notions of desert, whereby some of those who are in receipt of support (such as people with disabilities) are regarded as more 'deserving' of support than others (such as single-parents). Such notions of desert tend to be more common among those who have a socially conservative outlook - who tend to have lower levels of educational attainment and thus incomes. At the same time, we cannot assume that those who are less well-off are necessarily aware of the extent of inequality in their society. In short, there are reasons why support for anti-poverty measures is not necessarily as high as we might anticipate.Between them these considerations suggest that attitudes towards welfare depend not just on material circumstance but also social perceptions and values - and that the character and distribution of these cannot be taken for granted and may vary over time and between pl