Empirical studies show that preferences for redistribution vary according to socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education and employment status. Alesina and Giuliano (2009) find, based on US data from the General Social Survey, but also based on international data from the World Values Survey, that preferences for redistribution increase concavely with age, are higher among women, and among the unemployed. At the same time, being married, and a higher level of education have a negative association with preferences for redistribution. Broadly similar findings are reported by Corneo and Gruner (2002) and by Bernasconi (2006) based on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and by Luttmer and Singhal (2011) based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS). On the other hand, Gaviria, Graham and Braido (2007), analyzing data from the Latinobarometro survey, find that preferences for redistribution do not vary substantially according to age or marital status, although they also find a lower preference for redistribution among women.

A detailed review of theoretical approaches to modelling redistributive preferences is provided by Alesina and Giuliano (2009). In particular they highlight four types of models: (i) static models such as the one put forth by Meltzer and Richard (1981) where individuals only care about their consumption and differ in their productivity levels; the equilibrium tax rate then depends on the difference between the productivities of the average and median voters; (ii) dynamic models such as the one proposed by Benabou and Ok (2001) in which expected future mobility has an effect on current preferences for redistribution; (iii) models in which inequality enters indirectly into the utility function, because of various factors such as, for instance, crime, incentive effects, or externalities in education; and (iv) models in which inequality enters directly into the utility function, i.e. individuals may have particular concepts of social justice (e.g. libertarian, Rawlsian) which determine the degree of their intrinsic aversion to inequality. Some other models have also highlighted the importance of past mobility, because of reasons of dynastic learning (Piketty, 1995), as well as that of social competition and beliefs about the fairness of the distribution of fortunes on society (Alesina and Angeletos, 2005).

A number of recent empirical studies confirm these predictions from theoretical models. In particular, redistributive preferences have been found to be influenced by factors such as beliefs about hard work and luck, perceptions of fairness, past mobility, religion, political ideology, attitudes toward markets, cultural norms, or attitudes toward risk (Corneo and Gruner 2001; Fong 2001; Alesina and La Ferrara 2005; Alesina and Guiliano 2009; Luttmer and Singhal 2011; Cojocaru 2014a,b). Although some of these studies include a few Eastern European countries, there is little evidence on the demand for redistribution in transition countries.<sup>3</sup> In this paper, we use the Life in Transition survey allows to empirically test all of the above theoretical propositions based on comparable data from a large set of countries. The paper

> 3 The ESS data used by Luttmer and Singhal (2011) includes 11 countries (of which all except Russia and Ukraine are currently EU members), but their analysis does not focus on the specificity of transition Economies. Cojocaru (2014b) also analyzes data from the Life in Transition Survey, but focuses primarily on the prospects of upward mobility (POUM) hypothesis.

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