Estimates of intergenerational economic persistence typically rely on biological or adoptive parent–child links observed within stable nuclear families, thereby abstracting from the dynamic and often complex nature of family structure. Leveraging linked administrative registers, we construct time-varying measures of children's exposure to both biological parents and stepparents over the course of childhood. We show that restricting attention to biological ties understates the persistence of human capital by 12–31 percent. Moreover, stepfather-stepchild associations are stronger when stepfathers exhibit greater residential and economic commitment and when biological fathers are geographically distant, consistent with the hypothesis that stepparents exert direct environmental influences on children's outcomes.

We investigate whether the provision of information about the structure of public spending influences the public’s preferences in this regard. Using experimental data from a survey of 1800 Polish citizens, we uncover large misperceptions about the allocation of public spending. Respondents consistently underestimate the share of spending allocated to pensions, while overestimating the share allocated to environmental protection and public administration. However, when informed about the real structure of public spending, citizens express substantially different preferences for spending cuts or increases in some areas. The differences are particularly pronounced in those categories where beliefs about the size of spending are most distorted, with one exception — the treatment has minimal effect on the strong opposition to spending on public administration. In addition, we show that the provision of information improves the initially low assessment of government efficiency.

In 2021 the ruling party in Poland proposed a reform to reverse the regressivity of the Polish tax system. Although the number of potential beneficiaries significantly exceeded the number of sufferers, the media coverage of the reform was strongly negative. This pushed the government to introduce reform adjustments, all of which benefited the high-income self-employed, increasing the cost of the reform and reducing its redistributive effect. To explain this, we analyze articles on the reform published in the three most opinion-forming newspapers. We demonstrate that the negative media coverage stemmed from successful incorporation of business narratives in the public debate by the business lobbying associations. It was supported by the weakness of workers’ organizations and a low level of trust in government among citizens.