Neuer Diskussionsbeitrag von Tim Krieger, Christine Meemann, Stefan Traub: Inequality, Life Expectancy, and the Intragenerational Redistribution Puzzle: Some Experimental Evidence

Abstract:

In most OECD countries, pension reform policy has decreased the
level of intragenerational redistribution over the last three decades, that is,
redistribution among members of the same generation with high and low
pension entitlements. This trend has occurred despite heterogeneity in life
expectancy linked to socioeconomic status having a regressive impact on out-
comes. This paper contributes to solving this puzzle by means of a controlled
laboratory experiment. We study the causal relationship between inequality
of entitlements, mortality risk, and the size of redistribution in a stylized so-
cial security system. We find that mortality risk, when negatively correlated
with entitlements, significantly lowers subjects’ willingness to redistribute
payoffs from high-entitlement to low-entitlement subjects. We explain this
finding with efficiency preferences and an alienation effect. The alienation
effect is the tendency to attach a lower social weight to the short-lived poor.

The full text is available here.