Candidates' Tax Returns

Mitt Romney's unwillingness to release more than two years of tax returns is currently getting a lot of attention in the media.   The Romney campaign says "there is no evidence that voters care about this.  They think they know enough about Mitt Romney's finances."  Of course, this is what you'd expect the Romney campaign to say, but there are a lot of things that seem important to journalists and political insiders but not to the public (pretty much all "gaffes," for example).  I didn't expect to find many surveys asking about Romney's tax returns, although that may change soon if the issue stays in the news, so I looked for more general questions about candidates and tax returns.  To my surprise, there were only a handful.  The most interesting one is from back in 1988, asking "if it would prevent you from voting for the candidate or if it would have no effect" if a candidate "refused to release tax returns to the public."  72% said it would prevent them and 19% said it would have no effect.  They also asked about a number of other things.  The complete list:
                                          Prevent from voting for

Was known to have physically

    abused spouse or child                        91%

Refused to release tax returns                    72%

Was homosexual                                    65%

Had been convicted for drunk driving              57%

Said religion dictated his/her decisions          57%

Did not believe in God                            56%

Refused to be tested for AIDS                     54%

Had used drugs occasionally                       47%

 Had extra-marital affairs                        43%

Family member had criminal conviction             21%

Has a child out of wedlock                        21%

So there's evidence that voters care about releasing tax returns in general, although not about whether two years versus ten years makes a difference.

America's ranking

In honor of July 4th, this post is about a survey of where America ranks of various qualities.  (July 4th was almost two weeks ago, but I blog at a leisurely pace).  The survey was sponsored by the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University and US News.  The questions were introduced with "the UN Human Development report has ranked 32 industrial countries, including the United States, on a number of dimensions. Where do you think the United States ranks – from 1 being first to 32 being last – on each of the following?"  The items were:
                                                                                              Median perceived              Actual

life expectancy at birth                                                                 5th                               24th

research and development 

   expenditures as a percentage of GDP                                      10th                               ?

economic equality as 

   measured by the ratio of the richest

   10% to poorest 10% in income or consumption                      15th                              30th

Gender equality as measured by the ratio of

   female to male earned income                                                 15th                               ?

Mathematics literacy scores                                                       15th                              25th

I was unable to find the original UN report ranking 32 nations, and the Center for Public Leadership didn't report the actual rankings for R&D and gender equality, but I think the median public rankings are pretty close to the true ranking on those items (see the Human Development Report for rankings of all countries). 

That raises the question of who perceives the United States as ranking higher or lower.  I looked at the effects of self-rated ideology and education.  Conservatives see the United States as ranking better on every item.  I thought that math literacy might be an exception, since conservative leaders often are critical of American education, but the association was about equally strong for all.

The effects of education were more varied:  more educated people thought we ranked worse on math scores and better on life expectancy, gender equality, and R&D expenditures.  There was no association with perceived rank on inequality. 

Price controls

Another question from the Opinion Research Corporation:  "In normal times, do you think we can depend on competition to keep prices at fair levels, or is some sort of government control needed to keep prices fair?"

        Competition    Control   DK
1946       66%           30%     4%
1953       68%           27%     5%
1955       63%           32%     5%
1955       65%           30%     5%
1962       43%           43%    14%
1963       50%           38%    12%

That was the last time they asked about "normal times," but they later asked:  "Do you think we can depend on competition to keep prices at fair levels this year, or is some sort of government control needed to keep prices fair?"
 
        Competition    Control   DK

1971       27%           62%     11%
1974       26%           63%     11%

Between 27% and 43% of the public said that there should be price controls in "normal times," a proposition that would get almost zero support among policymakers and professional economists.  Clear majorities supported price control in 1971, and again in 1974 even though price controls had then been in effect for several years and hadn't been very effective in reducing inflation.  

Of course, it's possible that there would be less support for price controls today.  However, I think these results illustrate an important point about public opinion on economic policy:  it can't really be classified as liberal or conservative.  The best term might be "dirigiste":  people think that the government should be more active in regulating "bad" things, whether they involve companies raising prices or workers going on strike. 

Profit

Over a period of about 40 years, the Opinion Research Corporation occasionally asked:

"In [all] industries where there is competition, do you think companies should be allowed to make all [the profit] they can, or should the government put a limit on the profits companies can make? "

The results (* indicates that the question included the words in brackets).

       All they can  limit    DK

1946     61           31       8

1953     65           28       7

1955     66           28       6

1955     67           27       7

1961     62           24      14

1962     61           25      14

1963     53           32      15

1971     55           33      12

1973     48           40      12

*1975    36           55       9

*1976    39           55       6

*1977    39           55       6

*1979    34           60       6

*1981    41           51       8

*1983    43           51       6

*1986    61           31       8

Support for limits on profits rose in the 1970s and early 1980s, before dropping in 1986. The most plausible explanation of the rise is that it was a reaction to the high inflation of that time.  There seems to be no real trend over the longer term--opinions in 1986 were just like opinions in 1946--but unfortunately the question hasn't been asked since then. 

A level playing field

It's often suggested that Americans care more about equal opportunity than people in other nations (see the quotation from Luigi Zingales in my recent post).  You can support this with examples from history--the United States was traditionally a leader in providing public education, although other countries have caught up with us recently, and it still has less educational tracking than most other nations. 

What about surveys?  The 2009 ISSP survey discussed in my last post has one question that directly involves "a level playing field"--whether it's just that rich people can buy a better education for their children.  The other questions, except maybe the one on medical care, are about equal results--helping the poor and unemployed or taking from the rich.  Americans rank 31st among 38 nations on the education question, compared with an average of 32nd on the others (high numbers represent less egalitarian sentiments).  However, there are some nations in which rankings on the education question are substantially different from rankings on the others. 

More likely to see it as unjust

Belgium
Cyprus
Iceland
Denmark
Norway
Sweden

For example, Sweden is 12th most egalitarian on education, an average of 22nd on the others.  With the Scandinavian countries, this is probably because some of the questions involve implicit comparisons to the present; since the government already does a lot to equalize conditions in those countries, people are less likely to be in favor of doing more.  I don't know enough about Belgium or Cyprus to offer a guess about why they are on the list.

Less likely to see it as unjust

South Korea
Russia
Estonia
China
Taiwan
Japan

All of the East Asian nations in the survey show up on this list.  For example, people in South Korea are fairly egalitarian overall (an average of 12th on the other questions), but don't have a problem with rich people buying better education for their children (32nd).

In any case, Americans don't seem to make much distinction between equal opportunity and equal results--by international standards, we (and Anglo-Saxon settler societies more generally) don't care much about either one.

Americans and Equality: Not so exceptional

In my last post, I wrote about a "recent Pew survey" of twenty-seven nations in which Americans were much less favorable to income redistribution than people in any of the other nations.  That survey turned out to be from the International Social Survey Programme in 1999. 

The ISSP had another survey on social inequality in 2009, and it included a wider range of questions on redistribution.  Specifically:
1.  Agree or disagree that "differences in income in [country] are too large."
2.  Agree or disagree that "it is the responsibility of the government to reduce differences in income between people with high income and those with low incomes." [the 1999 question]
3.  Agree or disagree that "the government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed."
4.  Agree or disagree that "the government should spend less on benefits to the poor."
5.  "Do you think people with high incomes should pay a larger share of their income in taxes than those with low incomes, the same share, or a smaller share?"
6.  "Generally, how would you describe taxes in [country] today for those  with high incomes?  ... much too high, too high, about right, too low, much too low"
7.  "Is it just or unjust--right or wrong--that people with high incomes can buy better health care than people with lower incomes?"
8.  "Is it just or unjust--right or wrong--that people with high incomes can buy better education for their children than people with lower incomes."

There were 38 nations in this survey.   You can get a general index of views on equality by adding up the ranks on each of these questions.  The fancier approach is to perform a factor analysis and calculate factor scores, but that gives almost identical results.  The rankings, from least to most egalitarian:

NZ-New Zealand      284.5
PH-Philippines      265.0
US-United States    252.5
GB-Great Britain    244.0
ZA-South Africa     225.0
AU-Australia        224.0
NO-Norway           208.0
CZ-Czech Republic   203.5
CN-China            199.0
IL-Israel           193.0
AR-Argentina        191.0
BE-Belgium          184.5
CL-Chile            181.5
TW-Taiwan           181.0
PL-Poland           180.0
DK-Denmark          176.0
JP-Japan            171.0
ES-Spain            169.5
SE-Sweden           168.5
AT-Austria          158.0
CY-Cyprus           155.0
SK-Slovak Republic  153.0
CH-Switzerland      149.5
DE-Germany          141.5
FI-Finland          139.5
KR-South Korea      117.5
PT-Portugal         117.5
IS-Iceland          117.0
EE-Estonia          100.0
BG-Bulgaria          98.0
FR-France            97.5
TR-Turkey            82.0
HU-Hungary           79.0
RU-Russia            77.5
SI-Slovenia          73.0
LV-Latvia            69.0
HR-Croatia           66.0
UA-Ukraine           36.0

The United States is one of the least egalitarian nations, but doesn't stand out as much.  (We still rank as the least egalitarian on question 2, but not on any of the others).  Overall, Americans are only the third least egalitarian, behind New Zealand and the Philippines, and just ahead of Great Britain.  The most striking pattern is that five of the six least egalitarian nations were settled by people from the British Isles (the other is the Philippines, which was an American colony for about fifty years).  People of British descent don't necessarily make up a majority, but they had a disproportionate influence on the political history and culture of those nations. A few other interesting points are the big difference between the Czech and Slovak Republics, Norway's ranking as one of the less egalitarian nations, and  Switzerland's ranking as one of the more egalitarian. 

An interesting survey that doesn't exist

A 2011 essay in the City Journal by Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago business school, compared attitudes towards economic inequality in the United States and other countries.  The key passage (which also appears in his new book, A Capitalism for the People):

"in a recent survey of 27 developed countries by the Pew Charitable Trusts, only one-third of Americans agreed that it was the government’s responsibility to reduce income inequality; the country with the next smallest fraction to agree was Canada, with 44 percent, and the responses rose as high as Portugal’s 89 percent. Americans do not want to redistribute income, but they do want the government to provide a level playing field: over 70 percent of Americans said that the role of government was 'to ensure everyone has a fair chance of improving their economic standing.' This belief in equality of opportunity is supported by another belief: that the system is actually fair. Sixty-nine percent of Americans in the same survey agreed with the statement 'People are rewarded for intelligence and skill,' a far larger percentage than in any other country."

The Pew web site contains no reference to this survey.  However, I was able to track down the sources, which appear to be the 1999 International Social Survey Programme, which is the source of the first and third questions, and a Pew survey which was conducted in the United States and Canada in 2009, which was the source of the second.   The percentages for all countries on the ISSP questions:

           Reward   Reduce
USA           69    33
Philippines   69    59
Australia     65    48
WGermany      65    47
EGermany      56    73
Canada        56    44
Japan         54    47
NIreland      53    64
NZealand      51    47
Austria       49    70
Britain       48    64
Portugal      44    89
Spain         41    77
Norway        38    60
Sweden        38    57
Israel        38    81
France        36    62
Cyprus        34    56
Poland        31    80
Chile         30    74
Hungary       23    79
Czech         23    69
Slovenia      20    83
Latvia        20    76
Russia         9    82
Slovakia       9    72
Bulgaria       5    81



I wouldn't characterize 69.4 percent as "far larger" than 68.8 percent (the Philippines), or even the 65 percent in Australia and West Germany.  However, the United States does stand out on both questions.  A more recent round of the ISSP (2009) includes the question on government responsibility to reduce differences in income between people with high and low incomes, and once again only 33% of Americans agreed.