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Automatability of Work and Preferences for Redistribution
[journal article]
Abstract Although the importance of technological change for increasing prosperity is undisputed and economists typically deem it unlikely that labour-saving technology causes long-term employment or income losses, people’s anxiety about automation and its distributive consequences can be an important shaper... view more
Although the importance of technological change for increasing prosperity is undisputed and economists typically deem it unlikely that labour-saving technology causes long-term employment or income losses, people’s anxiety about automation and its distributive consequences can be an important shaper of economic and social policies. This paper considers the political economy of automation, proposing that individuals in occupations more at risk of job loss due to automation have stronger preferences for government redistribution. I analyse individual-level cross-national data from the European Social Survey and other sources, covering up to 32 countries and more than 170,000 individuals. I find a robust positive association between occupational automation risk and preferences for redistribution. As long as the conditional (mean) independence assumption is satisfied, my estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in automatability increases preferences for redistribution with roughly 0.05 standard deviations, which is comparable to the difference in preferences for redistribution between women and men.... view less
Keywords
ISSP; automation; redistribution; technological change; labor; social policy
Classification
Sociology of Work, Industrial Sociology, Industrial Relations
Social Policy
Free Keywords
International Social Survey Programme: Work Orientations II - ISSP 1997 (ZA3090 v1.0.0); International Social Survey Programme: Role of Government I-IV - ISSP 1985-1990-1996-2006 (ZA4747 v1.0.0); International Social Survey Programme: Social Inequality I-IV - ISSP 1987-1992-1999-2009 (ZA5890 v1.0.0); International Social Survey Programme: Work Orientations IV - ISSP 2015 (ZA6770 v2.1.0)
Document language
English
Publication Year
2022
Page/Pages
p. 130-157
Journal
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 84 (2022) 1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12460
ISSN
1468-0084
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed