The authors go on to report these trends: “in two ways: first, in any given survey year, the rich report that the rich are less materialistic than the poor. Second, as median incomes increase over time, the US population as a whole becomes less materialistic.”
In a separate 2020 paper, “Moral Values and Voting“Enke noticed that
Beginning in the 1960s, Republicans and Democrats polarized in their appeal to morality: over the past 30 years, Democrats have increasingly emphasized universal moral concepts, a trend significantly weaker among Republicans. Thus, today the Democrats have a fundamentally more universalist profile than the Republicans.
Enke measured support for universalist values using what he called a “moral foundation questionnaire” to “suggest respondents’ agreement with statements about moral values”, including “universal claims” such as “Compassion with suffering is an important virtue”, “The law must treat all people fairly” and “ Equity is the most important requirement for society”, as opposed to statements of “common values” such as “Be loyal to your family even if they have done something wrong”, “Be faithful to your family”. as a team player, instead of expressing himself” and “Soldiers must obey even if they disagree with the order. “
Analyzing recent presidential candidates’ speeches, Enke argues that Donald Trump is out of line with his followers’ world focus:
Trump’s moral language is less universal, or equally, more communal than that of any other presidential candidate in recent history. Trump is also more communal than his 2016 primary candidates. Furthermore, the difference in moral appeal between Trump and Hillary Clinton is particularly stark.
In their paper on the ethics of luxury goods, Enke, Wu, and Polborn argue that it is the wealthiest and best-educated citizens who promote contemporary political attention to issues. ethics and culture, emphasizing that “cultural or moral conflict is between different subsets of the elite. This conflict between the elites caused polarization within the party, which then spread to changes in the voting behavior of the poor. “
In a joint email, Enke and his co-authors explained the process in great detail:
As the rich get richer over time, they place more weight on their moral values than on material incentives. As a result, some affluent and morally free voters who once voted Republican have turned to Democrats. On average, the Democratic constituency becomes more morally liberal, while the Republican constituency becomes more morally conservative. To please these new constituencies, the Democrats turned to the left on social issues and the Republicans turned to the right.
Low-income, morally conservative white voters and formerly Democrats, the authors continue,
can now turn the Republican party around because of the shift in party positions. Now that parties are socially polarized, it becomes more appropriate for people to vote based on their merits, simply because the stakes have increased. As a result, in our model, morally poor conservatives can shake Republicans over time even if they don’t get richer, and even if economic inequality grows to disadvantage to them. In our model, all this is driven by the fact that the parties are somewhat responsive to the changing priorities of the rich, which are now more ethical in nature.
In “Identity, beliefs and political conflict” Giampaolo Bonomia doctoral candidate in economics at the University of California San Diego, and Nicola Gennaioli and Guido TabelliniProfessor of economics at Bocconi University in Milan, makes a similar argument:
Economic shocks that increase conflict between cultural groups can also trigger a shift to cultural identity. We give two examples: skilled bias engineering change and globalization. If these shocks hurt less educated voters and therefore more conservative voters, while at the same time benefiting more educated and therefore more progressive voters, they will deepen the divide. culture becomes more prominent and can induce a transition to cultural identity. As a result, the economic losers became more socially and financially conservative.
To support their argument, Bonomi, Gennaioli and Tabellini quote the work of David Autor and of Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig to “show that, both in the US and in Europe, the damage from international trade spurs support for right-wing and conservative parties”.
