Suggested Citation:
Epstein, Lucas and Erich Muehlegger (2024)

Ideology, Incidence and the Political Economy of Fuel Taxes: Evidence from the California 2018 Proposition 6

. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, Research Report UCD-ITS-RR-24-28

Abstract:

In 2018, California voters rejected Proposition 6, a ballot initiative that sought to repeal state gasoline taxes and vehicle fees enacted as part of the 2017 Road Repair and Accountability Act. This paper examines the relationship between support for the proposition, political ideology and the economic burdens imposed by the Act. For every hundred dollars of annual per-household costs imposed by the Road Repair and Accountability Act, support for proposition rose by 3–5 percentage points, roughly comparable to a commensurate increase in the share of ”liberal” voters. Notably, the relationship between voting and the economic burden of the policy is seven times strong in the most conservative tracts relative to the most liberal tracts. This heterogeneity has important implications for the popular support for environmental taxes, as conservative areas in California and elsewhere tend to bear a higher burden from transportation and energy taxes than liberal areas.