Worker vs Consumer: How Economic Identity Shapes Policy Preferences

This paper explores the dual economic identity that individuals embody as both consumers and workers and examines how these identities influence policy preferences. Using a new large online survey of US residents, I measure whether individuals identify more strongly as consumers or workers, their exposure to economic shocks, their political preferences, and a wide set of policy preferences, such as labor market policies, trade, immigration, and redistribution. I look at how identifying themselves more as a worker or as a consumer makes individual more or less in favor of policies favoring higher employment over lower inflation, trade restrictions, and more restrictive immigration policies, and whether this relationship is independent of their political affiliation. By employing a priming treatment, where I prompt respondents to reflect on the positive aspects of their job or of the things they consume, I causally identify the role of economic identity in shaping this broad array of policy preferences. Finally, I investigate how an individual's economic identity is shaped by significant life events, such as job promotions or job loss.