Earlier this year, I read a most interesting article by Diana Voerman-Tam, Arthur Grimes (both Victoria University of Wellington), and Nicholas Watson (Motu), published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (open access, with less technical summaries here and here). We also discussed it in the Waikato Economics Discussion Group earlier this year. The article looks at the economics of free speech. Specifically:
Can we measure the impact of free speech on people’s wellbeing (rather than its impact on economic growth per se), and can we determine which groups value free speech the most? This paper takes an empirical approach to answer these questions. We test whether free speech is valued differently by different groups in society, according to their level of re- sources as proxied by income or education. These relative valuations are analysed both using surveyed stated preferences and using estimates of the realized relationships between individuals’ subjective wellbeing (SWB), their country’s degree of freedom of speech, and individuals’ income or education levels, controlling also for other influences.
Voerman-Tam et al. used individual subjective wellbeing data from the World Values Survey and the Latino Barometer, and looked at the correlation with data on free speech and other human rights drawn from the CIRIGHTS database and the Varieties of Democracy database. They test two hypotheses:
The first reflects a view that free speech is a ‘luxury good’... The second reflects a view that free speech has an ‘empowerment effect’ for people with lower socio-economic status and who are therefore more likely to be marginalized in society...
If free speech is a luxury good, then people with higher income (or education) would have a more positive relationship between free speech and subjective wellbeing. That is, higher income people would have the greatest wellbeing gains from more free speech. On the other hand, if free speech has an empowerment effect, then people with lower income (or education) would have a more positive relationship between free speech and subjective wellbeing. That is, lower income people would have the greatest wellbeing gains from more free speech.
Interestingly, the paper starts with an analysis of stated preferences over the importance of free speech, based on responses to a World Values Survey question that reads:
If you had to choose, which one of the things on this card would you say is most important?: 1. Maintaining order in the nation. 2. Giving people more say in important government decisions. 3. Fighting rising prices. 4. Protecting freedom of speech.
Respondents were then asked which of the four choices was the next most important. Voerman-Tam et al. create two measures of the priority attached to free speech. The first is equal to one only if the survey respondent ranked freedom of speech as the most important (and zero otherwise). The second is equal to one if the survey respondent ranked freedom of speech either first or second in importance (and zero otherwise). Then, looking at the relationship between these variables and personal characteristics (including income and education), they find that:
A positive gradient is observed across both income and education for each of the free speech prioritization variables.
In other words:
...people with higher incomes or education place higher priority on free speech (relative to other alternatives that they are asked to rank).
I don't think too many people would find it surprising that people with higher income (or education) are more likely to state that free speech is more important to them than people with lower income (or education. This bit was also interesting, and mostly unsurprising:
Several other associations stand out: free speech is prioritized more by people who are young, students, and/or have no children, and by people to the left of the political spectrum. These characteristics are more in keeping with the hypothesis that people who are more marginalized favour free speech.
So, people with higher income (and education) say that free speech is more important. That is suggestive that free speech is a luxury good. However, it is based on stated preferences for free speech. People with low income (or education) likely have much more important things to worry about in their daily lives than whether they are able to exercise free speech.
A better question to ask, then, is who gains the most (in terms of wellbeing) from free speech? In the second part of their analysis, Voerman-Tam et al. find that overall, there is no correlation between free speech and subjective wellbeing (after controlling for other variables). However, that isn't what they were really interested in. When they interact free speech with income (or education), they find that:
...people with lower income (relative to others within their own country) benefit more with free speech than those with higher incomes, especially in countries with full free speech.
The results are similar for education. Overall, these results support the second hypothesis. So, despite the stated preference results suggesting that free speech is a luxury good, it turns out that people with lower income (or education) benefit the most from free speech (in terms of its contribution to subjective wellbeing).
In my view, the combination of these two results is important. People with higher incomes (or education) make up the elites in most societies, often holding positions of political (or if not political, then at least bureaucratic) power. If those groups believe that free speech is important (which according to these results, they do), then they are more likely to argue for more free speech. That, in turn, creates the greatest benefits (in terms of wellbeing) for people with lower incomes (or education), who are likely to be more disenfranchised. These results suggest to me that we might be optimistic for increases in free speech and somewhat of an equalising of wellbeing between the richer and poorer segments of society as a result.
However, before we get carried away, there are some important caveats. This research is based on correlations. It doesn't demonstrate that greater free speech causes increases in subjective wellbeing. We'd want to establish that more definitively. And, as with all research that involves subjective wellbeing data, we must be aware of its limitations and the criticisms it faces (for example, see here and here, but also see this post by Arthur Grimes as well).
Nevertheless, in the meantime high-income people should feel good about continuing to believe that free speech is of high importance.
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