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Values as Luxury Goods and Political Polarization

By: Benjamin Enke, Mattias Polborn and Alex A Wu
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:49
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Abstract

Motivated by novel survey evidence, this paper develops a theory of political behavior in which values are a luxury good: the relative weight voters place on values rather than material considerations increases in income. The model predicts (i) voters who are sufficiently rich to afford voting left; (ii) that more rich than poor people vote against their material interests; (iii) that Democrats are internally more fragmented than Republicans; (iv) that income and voting Republican are positively correlated across voters but negatively across states; and (v) the realignment of rich moral liberals and poor moral conservatives. We test our predictions empirically.

Keywords

Political Polarization; Government and Politics; Moral Sensibility; Luxury; Values and Beliefs; Voting

Citation

Enke, Benjamin, Mattias Polborn, and Alex A Wu. "Values as Luxury Goods and Political Polarization." Working Paper, April 2022. (Revised April 2023.)

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