Keywords: Religion, redistribution, inequality, politics, US, UK, India, cross-cultural, multivariate analysis, multilevel research, denomination, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, devout, secular

1. PURPOSE. Discover the effects of denominational differences (Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, Hindu, Muslim) and differences in belief (secular vs devout); education (university vs secondary school); age and sex; politics (Democrat, Labour, and Congress vs Republican, Conservative, and BJP); and perceptions of the economy (opportunity & meritocracy vs privilege and discrimination) on attitudes toward redistribution and inequality.

2. CONTEXT. Redistribution, inequality, and religion are key political cleavages in many societies, past and present.

3. METHODS. Multivariate statistical analyses of individual level survey data Baseline: Simple linear models predicting redistribution attitudes (5 item scale, alpha reliability >.85 for the US) from religion, education, age, sex, politics and perceptions of the economy, separately for each nation. Exploration: Multiplicative interactions (initially one at a time) with denominational differences, differences in belief, education, politics, and perceptions of the economy.

4. DATA. International Social Science Survey: Family 2024-2025 for the USA (in progress; N= 1200+). UK (N=500+) and India (N=1200+) scheduled for January 2025.

5. VARIABLES. Father's occupational status & respondent's occupational status (8+ vertical occupational status categories recoded from ISCO); education of respondent and parents, income; the usual demographics. Religious denomination and attendance in childhood and the present. Religious belief (5 item scale from the ASR). Perceptions of the economy (highly reliable 5 item scale). The usual demographic and background variables.
Focal are four novel items invented for this survey measuring PERSONAL morality (example: "It would be morally right for me to take a tiny fraction of Microsoft from its hugely wealthy founder, Bill Gates. Answer categories: Yes!!, Yes, ??, No, No!! ") and (asked far apart in the survey) measuring GOVERNMENT moral license (example: "Should the government take 10% of Microsoft from its insanely wealthy founder, Bill Gates, and redistribute it to poor Americans?")

6. RESULTS. So far we have to hand only the first wave of the US survey (frequencies only; multivariate analyses yet to come). Consistent with de Tocqueville's pessimistic account of 1830s America, a majority of Americans support redistribution in general (5 item scale known to be reliable in many nations).
Strikingly on our new questions, a narrow majority say it would be moral for them to personally take "a tiny fraction of Microsoft from Bill Gates" and also "a hundredth of Elon Musk's vast wealth for myself ". A larger majority say it would be OK for the government to do the same. All this sounds eerily like de Tocqueville's view of America in the 1830s. How (if at all) this links to religion remains to be explored.

7. IMPLICATIONS. de Tocqueville's analysis of the 1830s US is a classic in sociology and political science. How it applies (if at all) to the modern world is of great interest to the social sciences in general, and recent elections in the US, UK, and India in particular.