Women’s voice on redistribution: From gender equality to equalizing taxation

Abstract

We investigate the role played by gender equality in redistributive policies through taxation and in preferences for redistribution. First, at the cross-country level, we study how the historical roots of gender equality –i.e., the time of women’s enfranchisement and the role of women in the family – are related with the level of redistribution through taxation. We find that in countries that are historically more gender equal the tax system today is more redistributive. Second, at the individual level, in order to shed light on the cross-country evidence, we investigate whether gender equality is related with overall and/or gender-specific differences in preferences about redistribution. We find that in more gender-equal countries gender differences in redistributive preferences are significantly larger, while their average level does not significantly vary: when gender equality is stronger, women are systematically more favorable to redistribution, whereas there are no significant changes for men. In turn, the component of gender equality driving this result is –not surprisingly– the equality of women and men within the political sphere.

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