Does policy align with the preferences of the affluent because they are better informed? An empirical test

Research shows that affluent citizens see more of their preferred policies realized than the less affluent. If indicative of unequal influence over decisions, then this poses a problem for democratic equality. But one theory suggests that the affluent are better informed and therefore prefer policies that were going to be implemented anyway. If so, it would be a question of unequal information, not influence. We test this theory on the case of monetary policy in the United Kingdom, where information effects are especially likely: The policy-maker (the Bank of England) has a well-defined goal of price stability, there is broad expert agreement on how to achieve this, and the general public is not well informed of inflation dynamics. Survey data from more than 120,000 UK respondents from 2001 to 2026 reveal that monetary policy aligns more with the preferences of high-income earners, who are better informed about monetary policy and the state of the economy. Nevertheless, information can only explain about a quarter of the gap in preference–policy alignment between income groups, even in this most-likely setting. The unequal policy alignment identified in previous research is therefore unlikely to be a mere artifact of informational asymmetry and remains an important problem for political equality.