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In the past decade, skyrocketing housing prices and low wages forced Taiwanese citizens to focus on income redistribution issues, in addition to preexisting economic issues. However, current literature primarily focuses on the relationship between economic issues and evaluations on democratic institutions, rarely taking into account public opinion of income distribution. By using the Wave 4 and Wave 5 Asian Barometer Survey, this paper suggests that income redistribution issues are as important as economic issues to Taiwanese people when evaluating the performance of democratic institutions. Primarily, satisfaction with democracy declines when the Taiwanese perceive unfair income distribution. On the other hand, Taiwanese citizens are more likely to support democracy when they perceive unfair income distribution, although this positive relationship is not stable. Income distribution and democratic support may have a negative relationship in various years. Economic evolutions remain significant, but the effect of retrospective economic evaluation becomes insignificant when adding partisanship and prospective economic evaluation into models. |
