Does Less Income Mean Less Representation?

Eric J. Brunner; Stephen L. Ross; Ebonya L. Washington

doi:10.3386/w16835

Does Less Income Mean Less Representation?

Eric J. Brunner, Stephen L. Ross & Ebonya L. Washington

Working Paper 16835

DOI 10.3386/w16835

Issue Date February 2011

Revision Date January 2012

We assemble a novel dataset of matched legislative and constituent votes and demonstrate that less income does not mean less representation. We show 1) The opinions of high and low income voters are highly correlated; the legislator's vote often reflects the desire of both. 2) What differences in representation by income exist, vary by legislator party. Republicans more often vote the will of their higher income over their lower income constituents; Democratic legislators do the reverse. 3) Differences in representation by income are largely explained by the correlation between constituent income and party affiliation.

We thank Robert Erikson, Alan Gerber, Joanna Lahey and seminar participants at RAND, Stanford GSB, University of Connecticut, UCLA's Anderson School, University of Maryland, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty and Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies for their suggestions. We thank Meredith Levine for superb research assistance. We thank the National Science Foundation for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Does Less Income Mean Less Representation?

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