Framing Care and Support for Redistribution: Evidence from a Cross-National Study and Incentivized Experiment

Abstract This paper argues that support for public care provision depends not only on material interests or institutional capacity, but also on culturally shaped beliefs about care. We develop a stylized model in which narratives influence whether individuals perceive care as a shared social responsibility, as economically productive, and as something others will also contribute to. These beliefs jointly shape support for redistribution by affecting expectations about reciprocity, vulnerability, and collective coordination. We test the model using two complementary empirical strategies: a cross-national analysis of World Values Survey (WVS) data linked to a historically rooted measure of care-related moral narratives derived from folktales, and an incentivized framing experiment examining how public versus private narratives of care affect real-stakes prosocial behavior. Across both approaches, support for redistributive care is strongly associated with narrative environments.