Replication data for: Income, Preferences, and the Dynamics of Policy Responsiveness

In recent years, a number of studies have attributed increasing income inequality in the United States to the political system’s failure to represent the policy preferences of low income citizens. This representative failure hypothesis indicates a potentially serious shortcoming of the extensive literature on linkages between aggregate-level public preferences and public policy, implying that many macro political researchers have overlooked heterogeneity in preferences across income groups that is consequential for understanding governmental responsiveness to public opinion and democratic representation more generally. This paper uses the lens of the dynamic representation to address this shortcoming and reconsider claims of representative failure in the United States, asking and answering two questions: First, do the ideological policy preferences of Americans vary across income cohorts? And, second, is government differentially responsive to the preferences of wealthier citizens? To address these, we develop an aggregate, time series measure of mass policy sentiment that can be disaggregated into measure of policy sentiment across income groups. While we do find marginal differences in the dynamics of policy preferences across income groups, we also find that there is little evidence that either House of Congress responds disproportionately to the preferences of any income group.