Perceptions of own social class and local affluence: Effects on preferences for redistribution

This paper studies how perceptions of own social class and local affluence shape preferences for redistribution. We conduct a survey experiment with 1293 respondents in Lima Metropolitana, randomly correcting beliefs either about respondents’ own socio-economic status (SES) under Peru’s official five-class classification, or about the share of affluent households in their district. Misperceptions are strongly asymmetric: about 70% of respondents overestimate their own SES and about 50% overestimate the local share of affluent households. The effects of information, however, are not uniform. The clearest evidence comes from respondents who substantially overestimate local affluence: correcting this belief increases support for redistribution. For own SES, effects are concentrated among respondents who overestimate their position by at least two classes (34% of the relevant sample); among respondents whose misperceptions are smaller, the evidence is weaker. Neither treatment shifts support for a wealth tax, and perceived fairness of the income distribution is largely unaffected. Using geocoded data, we further show that local SES and local affluence are positively associated with respondents’ perceptions, while local inequality itself is only weakly related to redistributive preferences in the control group. The results suggest that corrective information can affect redistributive attitudes when perceived-actual gaps are large, but that these effects depend on the type and magnitude of misperceptions.