Work in progress

Preaching a Fair Share:
Religious Appeals and the Moral Economy of Taxation

Abstract

Why should the rich pay more? An individual moral economy treats prosperity as the fruit of faith and effort, carrying a personal duty to give back. A collective moral economy emphasizes shared responsibility for poverty and support for the disadvantaged. Religious traditions place different emphasis on these accounts, with potentially different implications for redistributive preferences. We study their implications in the context of a progressive taxation reform through a randomized experiment with churches in Kananga, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The tax administration asks pastors to relay property-tax information to their congregations. We randomly assign pastors to receive this request alone, the request with suggested sermons justifying higher taxes on the better-off through individual or collective responsibility, or no materials. Pastors choose whether and how to convey these messages. Recorded sermons, congregant surveys, and administrative payment records measure message uptake, beliefs about poverty and wealth, support for progressive taxation and redistribution, and tax compliance. The experiment tests whether these appeals motivate citizens to finance the state and whether their effectiveness depends on pastors' and congregants' religious beliefs.