II

This is dedicated to those that were there for me during the hardest period of my life who

helped me become healthy again, and to others also struggling with mental health issues.

III
IV
 Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VI

1.1 Literature review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII

1.2 Institutional differences: a background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X

2. Empirical strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII

2.1 Choice of main data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIV

2.2 Description of predictor variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XX

2.3 Multivariate analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXIV

3. Model Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXVI

3.1 Analysis of predictor variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXVIII

4. Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXXI

V
1. Introduction

The case of the United States is an interesting one: a western society

effectively transplanted across the Atlantic Ocean to thrive on foreign soil

with fundamentally European values, or at least was the case. While these

two geo-political regions share a surface-level resemblance, a stark

difference can be found in the foundation of their respective economic

systems. This contrast is reveals itself to be the stance on economic

redistribution, or the willingness to redistribute wealth from the better-off

to the worse-off. Social perceptions of both populaces on their counterparts

conclude that Europeans place greater value on economic equality whereas

Americans value economic egocentrism and independence. Some

Americans stereotype Europeans as lazy and poor, with no economic

liberty, even going as far as to accuse Europe a bastion of communism.

Europeans, on the other hand, may see Americans as workaholics, putting

success over everything, lacking morals, selfish, and taking capitalism too

far.

Although presented as mere beliefs, are these stereotypes founded

in fact? If these viewpoints are mostly exaggerated versions of the truth,

do they provide any evidence that these two populations have differing

social norms when confronted with topics such as economic selfishness?

This begs the question:

VI
 Is there a discernable statistical difference in the European aptitude for

economic redistribution in comparison to the respective American?

Prior to delving into this question, it is necessary to analyze the findings

already covered by other researchers.

1.1 Literature review

This is not the first work of its kind comparing societal differences

between Europeans and Americans, and it certainly will not be the last.

Despite the remarkably small number of these publications, we can

nonetheless highlight previous findings to discover if dissimilarities found

in those works can be reflected in this paper. Useful also is the comparison

of other societal traits between the two populaces, not solely that of

economic perspectives. Using these findings will help to clarify or debunk

potential explanations for said discrepancies across these geo-political

regions, especially for analyzing the willingness to redistribute between

Europe and the US.

One such social trait that is covered is political involvement, where

citizens’ behavior is very comparable between the two populaces (Dalton,

2006). Comparisons between the European Citizen, Involvement,

Democracy (CID) survey and American General Social Survey (GSS) find

VII
that the two exhibit strikingly similar relationships between age and duty-

based citizenship and engaged citizenship, and further between education

and engaged citizenship, thus suggesting the two regions have a very

similar makeup of political activity across different age demographics and

education experiences. The parallels between these two populations in

these regards reason it to be highly unlikely for the level of political activity

to exist as a factor contributing to the social preferences of Europeans and

Americans with regards to economic redistribution.

A study comparing religiousness in the US and Europe using ESS

(European Social Survey) and GSS data comparing the decline in

religiousness found the United States to be more religious compared to

most European nations, despite being on a similar trajectory of religious

decline (Brauer, 2018). Not only confirming the common belief that

Americans are more religious than their European counterparts, but this

study also reveals that the US is further along the path to religious decline

than most of Europe. Despite the US being more religious, one should not

conclude this to explain its aversion to economic redistribution.

The United States is certainly not the most religious country in the

West, as Ireland, Poland, Italy, and Greece are much more religious in

terms of attendance of religious services, to name a few (Brauer, 2018).

Notwithstanding this, Ireland, Poland, Italy, and Greece all exhibit higher

rates of willingness to redistribute among their respective populaces. It

should also be noted that countries such as France, Germany, and Sweden

VIII
show much lower rates of religious attendance yet similarly high levels of

social approval of redistribution. This brings doubt to the belief of higher

religiousness being a deciding factor in redistribution, and, on a national

level at least, it seems that the two are unrelated. This is something that

will have to be confirmed later in our regressions.

The probe into American and European propensity to support

economic redistribution utilized ESS and GSS data from 2002 to 2006 to

compare the aptitude to redistribute wealth across European nations and

the United States to find that Europeans were nearly twice as likely than

Americans to support the notion (Massari, Pittau, and Zelli, 2009).

Moreover, Massari et al. (2009) expanded these findings by examining the

individual characteristics behind that difference, highlighting religious

attendance, education, and socioeconomic status as some key factors in

determining support for redistributive policies in both areas. However,

Massari et al. (2009) note that some of those factors affect the disposition

to support these policies in opposite ways: the highly educated in Europe

are more averse towards redistribution while the reverse holds true in the

United States. Also, the group found Europe to exhibit much higher

variation in support for redistribution across its many nations than there is

across the individual states of the US. We will have to see if these factors

have the same or different effects more than 10 years later.

1.2 Institutional differences: a background

IX
 It should be noted the different types of economies across the world,

specifically in the West, with European countries and the United States

exhibit different variations of these. Despite the West being generally

classified as capitalist economies, there are numerous “flavors”, ranging

from the mainstream versions of the liberal market economy (LMEs) to

coordinated market economies (CMEs). Though these systems might seem

quite similar because they include the phrase “market economy” or because

the mere difference of a single word in their classifications, they differ quite

significantly. These differences fundamentally change the way markets and

societies function on a national basis, with the ramifications of these

distinctions varying from a micro to a macro level.

While the United States is an LME, Europe is composed of mostly

CMEs and of systems somewhere in between as a combination of the two.

Naturally, every country is different and, thus, has unique systems in place.

These differences have varying effects on the functionality of each nation’s

society including how they view different issues, especially economic ones.

As an example, Germany and many Nordic countries have CMEs, the United

States and the United Kingdom have LMEs, and most other European

countries, including Italy, France, and Spain, fall somewhere in between.

Many of these “in-betweeners” do show systematic similarities to each

other—it is being suggested that there should be new classifications of

systems, like the “Mediterranean” type (Kapás, 2013)—but this is another

topic of discussion. The important note to be taken from these differences

is that even countries within Europe that function in similar economic ways

X
differ still. This fact reveals Europe to not be one homogenous region in

which all peoples have the same ideals, instead merely comparable ones.

To help explain some of the fundamental differences between the varying

economic systems, here is a brief overview of the two main types: LMEs

and CMEs.

CMEs are a more socialist form of capitalism than the other main

Western systems of market models. In CMEs, the hallmark difference from

the others is that its economic equilibrium on which firms interact relies on

non-market relationships for the strategic cooperation — hence the name

“Coordinated Market Economy” — between firms and other actors (Hall et

al., 2001). These non-market forms of collaboration allow more

collaborative rather than competitive relationships to build the capabilities

of firms. CMEs are also much fonder of bank finance, trade unions, and

other social organizations than countries with Liberal Market Economies and

tend to focus on the welfare of the collective population rather than keeping

a more “hands-off” approach and leaving most relationships up to market

institutions.

LMEs, on the other hand, are most prevalent in the common law lands

of North America and the United Kingdom and are the raw and cut-throat

edition of market systems that the world normally associates with the

stereotypical idea of capitalism, where market mechanisms and financial

markets oversee the determining and allocation of wages and resources,

and allocation bank finance respectively (Economist, 2020). Firms in this

XI
system plan their activities on competitive market arrangements. These

market arrangements and relationships follow the neoclassical economical

competitive schemes of “arm’s-length exchanges” of goods and services to

determine the economic equilibrium in their competitive markets (Hall et

al., 2001).

Individual success is an interesting topic of discussion between these

two systems. The belief of the “American Dream” is alive and well thanks

to one hallmark trait of Liberal Market Economies: a high-risk high-reward

system of success. Since market control determines the equilibrium, the

US economy and its industries within are susceptible to rapid changes in

demand, which implicate wider market effects. This system makes hopping

onto a potential booming industry and making billions very plausible and

accessible, as the case with Jeff Bezos and Amazon. But just as there are

always two sides to every coin, it also means that it is very easy to be on

the opposite end of the playing field. An example of this is the retail

industry, which is currently dying in the US because of lack of demand and

lack of institutional support yet is left to fend for itself. For CMEs, however,

when it comes to rapid change, the economy is slow to adjust to booming

trends. This is due to governmental support with the goal of keeping the

worse off from losing their job, home, and anything else drastic, thanks to

reeducations programs, and subsidies to keep struggling firms and

industries competitive. This means that, while it is harder to become ultra-

rich, it is also much harder to become ultra-poor, a big element of social

welfare exhibited in many European economic systems.

XII
2. Empirical strategy

Moving on to the structure of this research, my research comprises

of data taken from both the United States and Europe. Looking for high

quality primary data, the best places to assess for are social surveys of the

two regions, of which I decided on the GSS and ESS respectively. The GSS

is made up of data taken from around the US, while the ESS collects data

from 40 European and related countries, although I chose to take data from

29 countries as not all 40 were available in the last two round of the ESS.

Additionally, I decided that it would be best to exclude Israel and Russia

from my research as I wanted to target “traditionally European” countries.

Both surveys are vast in nature and cover topics from census-like

variables like income, race, age, and education, but also range to moral

and political issues: personal and family wellbeing, immigration, race

relations, justice, welfare, democracy, and many more like areas with

surprising depth.

Although the two surveys have yearly or biannual releases dating

back to 2000 and before, I chose to use the most recent data available as

to have the most modern take on the societal situations occurring between

Americans and Europeans. Thus, I chose to settle on both the 2016 and

2018 rounds of the surveys (the 2020 round has yet to be released for both

the ESS and GSS). I combined the two rounds for both ESS and GSS to

XIII
increase the sample size and to have a more averaged dataset over the

two-year span.

2.1 Choice of main data

When choosing how to measure willingness to economically

redistribute there are a myriad of variables asking different questions in

different ways to the respondents. Finding a useful combination of these

variables was a difficult task to begin with, but something that should be

noted about the GSS and ESS is that they ask nearly entirely distinctive

sets of questions, even if the topics are the same. This makes comparing

and choosing similar variables quite complicated.

In the end, I ended up choosing a single variable measuring, using

n-point scales, the respondent’s extent on agreeing or disagreeing with

whether the government should reduce income differences in their country.

The variable on demand for redistribution for the ESS was GINCDIF, where

the precise statement was, “The government should take measures to

reduce differences in income levels”. The responses for the question were

on a 5-point scale, 1 being “Agree strongly” and 5 being “Disagree

strongly”. The variable chosen to represent the willingness to redistribute

for the GSS was EQWLTH, with the statement, “Some people think that the

government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between

the rich and the poor, perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or

XIV
by giving income assistance to the poor”. The responses were on a 7-point

scale, where 1 was “Government ought to reduce the income differences”

and 7 was “Government should not concern itself with reducing income

differences”.

To get a better idea of the geographic makeup of redistributive

preferences, I chose to breakdown Europe to the national level and the

United States into geographical regions to note patterns between areas and

trends between groups of countries/regions. This is certainly something

that will add another level of depth to the comparison of Americans and

Europeans since, as I have mentioned before, different countries’ populaces

in Europe have different views on the matter, along with the US even

showing societal differences across is vast geographical landscape.

Unfortunately, the GSS does not allow the identification of single states

when it comes to respondents, rather being identified by nine regions or

divisions. The breakdown of these divisions is as follows:

Middle Atlantic: New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania

New England: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode

Island, Vermont

East North Central: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin

West North Central: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota,

Missouri, Nebraska

XV
 South Atlantic: North Carolina, South Carolina, Delaware, District of

Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia

East South Central: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee

West South Central: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Mountain: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah,

Wyoming

Pacific: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington.

I went a further step to group these divisions by macro-region, as follows:

Northeastern US: Middle Atlantic, New England

Midwest US: E. North Central, W. North Central

Southern US: South Atlantic, E. South Central, W. South Central

Western US: Mountain, Pacific

I also went ahead and grouped the European nations covered in my

research into regions as follows:

Western Europe: Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland

Benelux: Belgium, Netherlands

British Isles: Ireland, United Kingdom

Mediterranean: Cyprus, Italy, Portugal, Spain

Northern Europe: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden

XVI
 Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

Eastern Europe: Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia

Balkans: Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia

These (macro)-regions for the US and Europe are made based on cultural

and ethnocultural similarities between the different divisions and countries

respectively. This way, it will be easier to visualize and cluster the results

and note similarities within different regions and compare them against

other regions within their respective continents or even across the pond.

Rather than keep the n-point scales for each of the variables, I chose

to make it a binary preference, where either the respondent was or was not

in favor of the redistribution of wealth. This was done by creating a new

variable for both datasets: REDIST, short for redistribution, where the value

was 1 when GINCDIF<3 and EQWLTH<4 for the ESS and GSS respectively

and zero otherwise.

Initially starting with a micro-geographic look at each nation and

division within their regions, we find some interesting patterns. We see that

in the United States the generally liberal regional divisions of the Pacific,

New England, and Middle Atlantic areas see the highest rate of willingness

to redistribute in the nation, with New England seeing the highest at 58.8%.

This is particularly interesting because the Northeastern United States has

the most European influence out of all the regions in the US. Urban centers

such as Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia have particularly high

XVII
populations of European immigrants, having stayed especially closer to

their European heritages. This could be a hint that the strong European

influence in the area has a broader effect on the region’s greater propensity

to redistribute. The traditionally conservative southern divisions, on the

other hand, see much lower rates of approval, with both South Central

divisions being under 46% (See Table 2). It should be noted that the

variation between the regions is relatively minimal compared to the much

more wide-ranging spreads of European nations.

The state of willingness to redistribute wealth on the other side of the

pond, however, is a very different picture. Speaking broadly, 73.8% of

Europeans support the act, much more than the 51.1% of Americans on

the same page. As stated earlier though, the makeup of these thoughts

across the continent varies greatly. The lowest rate of approval in any

country/division covered in these studies was in Denmark, where the

percentage was a mere 44.8% (See Table 1). Meanwhile the highest

willingness to redistribute was in Lithuania with 90.9%. Also, the regions

with the highest rates are the Mediterranean and Balkans, whilst the lowest

rates are in the British Isles, Benelux, and, surprisingly enough, Eastern

Europe, though this is mostly due to the very low rate of approval in

Czechia.

XVIII
Table 1 Table 2

Table 3 Table 4

XIX
 Even though the numbers are not very consistent across the

continent, the story in some regions is very different. Areas like the

Balkans, Mediterranean, and greater Western Europe are mostly consistent

in their citizens’ opinions (within each region). On the other hand, in some

regions, like Eastern Europe and Northern Europe, there are near outliers

within the same or similar culture groups. A perfect example of this is the

comparison of the willingness between Iceland and Denmark, where

Iceland reports 80.6% of their citizens being apt to redistribute, nearly

double the rate of its previous overlord. Occurrences of greatly different

results are very common in this part of the world, but regardless of the

gravity of said differences, nearly all nations covered in this study exhibited

higher rates of willingness to redistribute wealth than their American

counterparts.

2.2 Description of predictor variables

Besides simply acknowledging the differences, it would add intrigue

to the discission to see what caused said differences. Additionally, it is

possible that we might be able to finally understand why these two regions

have such different views on the topic of economic redistribution. There

were plenty of variables from both the ESS and GSS that should have been

included in this analysis, however, due to the fundamentally different

nature of the two surveys, many interesting options as predictors were

either partially or simply entirely different on the two surveys. Some

XX
unfortunately did not exist on both surveys. Thus, I have had to focus on

the more basic predictors, such as sex, marital status, political beliefs,

income, education, and many more (See table 5).

These variables should not be discredited due to their simplistic

nature, however. It is the simple traits of individuals that result in being

the strongest predictors of behavior and preference.

Several variables were normalized from their original meanings to be

more concise and to make them comparable against their counterpart’s

equivalent data. To decide whether respondents were religious or not, I

decided on seeing whether individuals attended religious services more

than once a month. The GSS-related variable of political alignment did not

focus on a Left-Right scale, rather a Democrat-Independent-Republican

scale, which needed to be converted to a Left-Right scale to be fairly

compared with the political measurements of the ESS. It should be noted

that beliefs that would be “Left-leaning” in some countries, like the US,

could be viewed as “Right-leaning” in other countries, so the assumption is

that these individuals are noting their political views with respect to their

populaces.

Highest education received is also measured differently in the United

States and Europe, and thus in their respective social surveys as well.

Because of this, I converted the European specifications of ES-ISCED IIIa

and lower as “Up to high school diploma”, ES-ISCED IV and ES-ISCED V1

as “Up to bachelor’s degree”, and anything higher, essentially ES-ISCED

XXI
V2, as “Higher than bachelor’s degree”. The GSS did not measure in terms

of completion of programs that were thus classified by a European

education system, rather it measures education based on years. Thus, I

converted 1-12 years of education, typically a normal high school

education, as “Up to high school diploma”, 13-16 years, as normal college

degrees take 4 years, as “Up to bachelor’s degree”, and 17+ years as being

“more than bachelor’s degree”. It should be noted that there could be the

possible confusion of individuals who had to repeat school years or take

longer to graduate high school or university, which could skew the highest

level of education of respondents in the United States. However, this is a

rather seldom occurrence in the US, certainly compared to Europe where

taking extra years to complete degrees is more common, so we can assume

the discrepancy to be negligible.

XXII
Table 5

XXIII
 Income is the last variable that had to be modified to be easily

comparable in my study. Total household income, as measured by the ESS,

is total net income of the household from all sources and is measured not

by gross value, but rather is noted as which income decile the respondent

fell into with his/her response. For the GSS, however, total household

income refers to total family income before taxes from all sources and is

recorded in 25 different income ranges in US Dollars. To normalize the two

sets of income for currency and relative position regarding the country of

the respondent, I used US income averages and quintiles of 2016 and 2018,

according to the Tax Policy Center, to redefine GSS income into a new 5-

point variable defining the 5 income quintiles of the United States. I also

redefined ESS income by grouping 2 deciles per respective quintile so both

income measurements were in normalized quintiles — ready to be

compared.

2.3 Multivariate analysis

This study is based on multivariate regression. The multivariate

regression model examines the linear relationship between the dependent

variable (Y) and 2 or more independent variables (Xi) and their respective

population slopes (βi):

Y = β0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + … + βkXk + ε

XXIV
where β0 is the y-intercept, k is the number of independent variables, and

ε is the random error. Along with a sizeable N of 40,350 and 3,021

respondents for the ESS and GSS respectively and no perfect

multicollinearity, all the assumptions for the multivariate regression were

met and we could continue with the analysis. The regressions were also

weighted using the analytical weights of PSPWGHT and WTSSALL for ESS

and GSS respectively.

Next was the data cleaning process. After cleaning the data of missing

values and no/refused answers, the data was reformatted to make the

variables to be used in the final regressions. Most of the variables were

recorded on n-point scales and were be adjusted into dummy variables to

simplify the regression and ultimately make the analysis of the results

easier. Other variables, like AGE, FAMINC, EDU, and POLI (age, totally

family income, education level, and political view respectively) were instead

formatted to their respective ranges and scales.

I also ran an exploratory factor analysis to attempt to grouping some

of the variables. After finding a high determinant of the correlation matrix

(.718 for the American data and .330 for the European data), which reflects

low correlation between the variables, it was obvious that a clear set of

factors would not be found. Unfortunately, the KMO Measure of Sampling

Adequacy of the analysis was .490 and .568 in the two datasets, which is

rather unacceptable for FA. Thus, I was unsuccessful in finding suitable

factors to simplify my analysis.

XXV
3. Model Results

When looking at the results of our multivariate regression analysis,

we found a few similar and, strangely, many different effects that the

predictor variables had on the willingness to redistribute for Americans and

Europeans. Only half of the variables included in the regression saw the

same effect, or lack thereof, in both the United States and in Europe. Out

of all the variables included in the regression, all were statistically

significant except for MINORITY (whether the respondent is a minority) in

Europe, and HADKIDS (whether the respondent has had children) in both

the US and Europe.

The coefficient of determination, R2, has relatively low values in both

the GSS and ESS regressions, meaning only a small percent of the total

variation in the dependent variable (support of government redistribution)

is explained by the variation in the independent variables included in the

regression (the predictor variables) with both being below 10%. The details

of the regressions can be found on Table 6 for the European (ESS)

regression and on Table 7 for the American (GSS) regression.

XXVI
Table 6

Table 7

XXVII
3.1 Analysis of predictor variables

The four respondent characteristic that had the same effect in both

populations were the sex, whether the respondent has kids, political

standing, and level of education. In both the United States and Europe,

being a female made it more likely for one to support government

redistribution, ceteris paribus. Studies have shown that this difference in

preference, quite prevalent in Western countries, derives from a gender

gap in self-confidence and risk aversion (Buser et al., 2020), as women

tend to have lower confidence compared to men’s overconfidence in their

ability to succeed and, thus, are more risk-loving than their female

counterparts. Essentially, women demand more redistribution because they

are more realistic in their expectations. Having kids remarkably was not

statistically significant in either region, suggesting that having children

simply does not affect redistributive preferences of parents.

Political stance was an obvious predictor, and the data shows that the

more politically Right the respondent is, the less likely he/she is to support

government redistribution. This can be due to a variety of reasons, but

economically conservative policies are typically supported by most Right-

leaning and Conservative individuals across Western nations. One of these

policies is being strongly against economic redistribution, more specifically

at the hands of the government. It should be noted that political stance had

the greatest effect, demonstrated by it exhibiting the greatest absolute

coefficient, on likelihood to support government redistribution.

XXVIII
 The last predictor with the same effect on both populations is

education level. The data shows that there is a negative linear relationship

between the highest level of education received and support of government

redistribution of wealth, ceteris paribus. This result is particularly

interesting because Massari et al. (2009) found that, while the highly

educated were less likely to support the notion of redistribution of wealth

in Europe, the opposite was true in the United States in 2009. This stark

change in preference in the US seems to be a possible sign of a decreasing

level of support in greater economic equality in the more educated

populations in America and an increasing homogeneity of views across the

Western world.

The respondent’s state of identifying as a minority is an interesting

case in this regression. In Europe, there is no statistical evidence linking it

to propensity to redistribute, while in the United States there is a strong

positive correlation between the two. Thus, it seems as if race plays little

role in this belief in European nations while being a strong predictor in the

US, where being African American was previously found to not have a

statistical connection a mere 12 years ago (Massari et al., 2009).

Age, marital status, and religiousness boast similar but opposite

effects in the two regressions. The 3 predictors were all found to have

positive linear correlations with being in favor of government redistribution

of wealth for Europeans, but the contrary was true for Americans. A

possible insight for the disparity of effect by religiousness may be due to a

XXIX
strong cultural difference of the role of religion. In the United States,

religion allows struggling individuals to cope with their adverse economic

situations, whether it be unemployment or negative shocks to income, by

alleviating their psychic costs (Scheve and Stasavage, 2006). Scheve et al.

theorized that American religiosity serves as an alternative to social

insurance and other redistributive functions, or that charity activities

organized by local churches, mosques, etc. are seen as substitutes for

government redistribution, a role in society that is not as prevalent in

Europe.

Lastly, total family income saw an unsurprising negative linear

correlation with willingness to redistribute in Europe, but in the US the

correlation was remarkably positive, albeit also much weaker. This result is

very confusing, as the United States, bearing a liberal market economy,

was expected to exhibit a much stronger negative relationship between the

two variables than in Europe. However, Massari et al. (2009) remarked that

personal income influences support for income redistribution in both

regions, so it seems that Europe has experienced more of a change in social

views in terms of support of government redistribution compared to the

Americans.

XXX
4. Concluding remarks

After this analysis I can confidently say, when it comes to the

research question of this paper, there is enough undeniable evidence to

statistically prove that there exists a discernable statistical difference in the

European aptitude for economic redistribution in comparison to the

respective American. Although not particularly surprising, the common

belief that Europeans were more apt to support the redistribution of wealth

than their American counterparts was confirmed. Despite the very high

variability in Europe, with nearly 75% of Europeans supporting the notion

compared to 51% of Americans, Europeans have an irrefutable social

difference. Perhaps it is due to this strong belief in social welfare and a

greater emphasis on income equality that causes the divisions in the United

States with the most European influence (New England and the Middle

Atlantic) to inherit their higher rates of approval of the notion compared to

the rest of the nation. Apart from Czechia and Denmark, every single

European nation has higher willingness to redistribute than the United

States, with nearly all of them having more than two-digit proportions over

the US.

The independent predictor variables based on characteristics of the

respondent were also found to exhibit particular linear correlations and

effects on the willingness to redistribute depending on the region. A few of

the predictors presented the same effect on both the United States and

Europe. Educational background and political stance presented the two

XXXI
strongest negative correlations for both Americans and Europeans, while

the respondent’s sex played a surprising role as a positive indicator in both

areas. Many variables displayed differing effects on the two populations,

where the predictor variables of status as a minority, total family income,

and religiousness embodied the numerous diverse social norms differed

that distinguish the many cultures of Europeans and Americans.

In the end, this analysis on the discernable statistical differences on

attitudes on economic redistribution has confirmed previous findings, as

well as shine light on a few new particularities discovered in the vast realm

of cultural and societal differences. The insight gained from this research

into the social and economic particularities of the two Western regions is

beneficial for those curious about how these two lands are so diverse

despite seeming so similar from the outside. I hope this will bode useful for

research and analyses in the years to come.

XXXII
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