Past scholarship has documented that the poor are more likely to withhold their policy preferences in public opinion surveys, suggesting income gaps in political engagement. Despite the wealth of scholarly interest in opinion formation, however, previous studies focused almost exclusively on opinion gaps in preferences, leaving income-related gaps in policy prioritisation virtually unexamined. Drawing on 596 public opinion surveys conducted with nearly 700,000 Americans over 55 years, we make a comprehensive attempt to examine income-level differences in “don’t know” responses to the most important problem (MIP) question. Our results show that the less affluent are more likely to say “don’t know” when asked about the MIP facing their country, even after controlling for various factors including educational attainment and political attention. Importantly, we also show that income-related differences in opinionation cross cut other socio-economic differences in policy prioritisation. These results have important implications for the study of public opinion.

This paper presents a model of development that is driven by matching between talents and technologies. Differences in productivity across countries are amplified by three dimensions of talent utilization: the range of talents utilized, the density of a specific talent utilized, and the average match quality in the economy. In our model, higher productivity increases the number of technologies available, enhancing the opportunities for individuals to match their talents to specific technologies and increasing the returns to search. More intensive search further contributes to talent utilization.