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- Title
Estimating the Socio-Economic Status of the U.S. Capitol Insurrectionists.
- Authors
Komlos, John
- Abstract
The income of those who attacked the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2021 and were subsequently arrested is estimated for the first time using the annual per-capita income in the neighborhood of their residence as a proxy measure. Contrary to common wisdom, we find that two groups were conspicuously underrepresented from this subset of the insurrectionists (N = 933): the utterly poor (whose estimated per- capita income was below $15 K), as well as those whose estimated annual per-capita income was above $50 K per annum. Fully 83.3 % of the arrestees resided in areas with a (five-year average) annual per capita income between $20 K and $50 K (in 2020 prices). This finding dovetails with the argument that the right-wing populist movement in the U.S. is driven largely by the struggling lower-middle class who have been left behind by the transition from an industrial to a knowledge economy. The public policy implications point to the amelioration of this distributional deficit.
- Subjects
UNITED States Capitol (Washington, D.C.); UNITED States. Congress; SOCIOECONOMIC status; TRUMP, Donald, 1946-; RIGHT-wing populism; MIDDLE class; INCOME; GOVERNMENT policy
- Publication
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2024, Vol 24, Issue 1, p285
- ISSN
2194-6108
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/bejeap-2023-0255