Who to Help? Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia
Abstract: Does generalized trust in society influence individual preferences over target groups for government redistribution? Existing research shows that trust affects government redistribution. In this paper we demonstrate that trust is important not only for demand for redistribution in general, but also for the preferred design of redistribution policy. Using a set of surveys of about 34,000 individuals across 68 Russian regions that were conducted in 2007, 2009 and 2011 we show that in high trust environment people demonstrate higher levels of support in favour of those who have performed services on behalf of the society, or can’t work because of health problems or age; lower support is found for people in difficult life situations who are still able to work. To explain the observed relation we propose two possible mechanisms: substitution hypothesis, when people may expect help from others that substitutes support from the government, and civicness hypothesis, when people want to reward those who have done something noticeable for their country or to help those who are in great trouble and need special assistance which could be provided by the government. A novel instrumentation strategy is used to account for endogeneity. The results are robust to alternative calculations of the redistribution index, trust levels derived from 2007 and 2009 survey waves, and inclusion and exclusion of a rich set of control variables.
