State Union Density Effects on Workers’ Support for Reducing Income Inequality, 1973-2016

Research often borrows on common yet somewhat unsubstantiated beliefs that unions influence inequality attitudes among unionized and nonunionized workers. This paper draws on inequality attitude data from the General Social Survey and state-level union data from the Current Population Survey and County Business Patterns between 1973 and 2016 to test this hypothesis. Linear probability, fixed-effects, and marginal structural models estimate that a large increase in state union density moderately increases workers’ support for reducing income inequality by three to 12 percentage points. Findings lend some empirical support for the capacity of unions to influence redistributive policy and market attitudes.