Understanding key drivers of attitudes toward income inequality in the Asia Pacific region

Abstract

Attitude toward income inequality and its drivers have attracted great attention from policymakers around the globe. Nevertheless, it appears that there is a shortage of empirical studies on the issue, at least in the context of the Asia-Pacific region – the World’s most dynamic economic region. This study is conducted to determine key drivers of attitude toward income inequality from various demographic factors, including Gender, Age, Political party, Education, Supervision, Family income, and Class. Available data for 19 countries at a different level of economic growth and development in the region are collected from the World Values Survey in 2016. The findings from this empirical study suggest that the role of each demographic factor as a significant explanation of variation in the attitude toward income inequality is different across nations in the study. In addition, a set of demographic factors, significantly contributing to the variation in attitude toward income inequality, varies across selected countries in the study. Among the demographic factors, Supervision and Class tend to be dominant factors in explaining variation in the attitude toward income inequality.