Research

“Concentrated Income and Voter Turnout by State” [Presented at APSA 2025]

This paper contributes to the literature exploring the connection between economic inequality and voter turnout by introducing regional income concentration as a key predictor of nonvoting. Existing literature formulates competing mechanisms to explain the impact of economic inequality, resulting in contradictory conclusions. This paper introduces the idea of extreme income concentration, distinct from broad inequality, as a significant factor negatively affecting voter turnout in US elections. A mixed multilevel model shows extreme concentration is correlated with a decrease in voter turnout during congressional elections, even when accounting for Gini coefficient. A shift-share instrumental variable regression provides evidence for causality.

“Wealth Concentration and Democratic Support in Latin America” [working paper]

This paper reorients the inequality-democracy debate by demonstrating that wealth concentration, not just inequality, undermines support for democracy. We develop theoretical arguments for how wealth concentration impacts the welfare state and the social contract, political trust and efficacy, the political system of blame and accountability, social cleavages, and hopes of upward mobility, leading to reduced popular support for democracy. An Error-correction model and a multilevel model employ data from the Latinobarometro and the World Inequality Database to quantitatively prove the significant, negative relationship between wealth concentration and democratic support in Latin America between 1995 and 2023. This relationship remains significant even when including the Gini coefficient. The relationship between wealth concentration and anti-democratic sentiment is weaker for those with very good self-reported socioeconomic status and more moderate political views.