This paper explores how income growth affects preferences for redistribution and how income

growth conditions citizens’ responses to rising inequality. We hypothesize that robust income

growth reduces demand for redistribution among high-income as well as low-income citizens

and reduces their propensity to respond to rising inequality by demanding more redistribution.

Drawing on the European Social Survey, our main empirical analysis covers 17 European countries

from over the period 2002-18 and yields results that are consistent with our core hypotheses.

In addition, we explore causal mechanisms by analyzing data from the Inequality and

Politics Survey, an original cross-national survey carried out in 2019. The latter analysis yields

suggestive evidence that income growth dampens support for redistribution by reducing expectations

of downward income mobility in the top three income quartiles. Furthermore, we

find that income growth tends boost belief in hard work as an important determinant of income

differences among respondents in the lower half of the income distribution and that rising

inequality depresses such beliefs among all respondents.