Abstract
This study examines how COVID-19-related economic hardship has reshaped perceptions of fairness and support for redistribution across Asian countries. Using three waves of the Asian Barometer Survey (2014–2023) and a Difference-in-Differences design, the analysis compares changes in attitudes between countries with higher versus lower shares of respondents reporting household income loss or job loss. Controlling for individual characteristics, country fixed effects, and common time shocks. The results show that in high-loss countries, perceived fairness falls by about 0.15 points on a four-point scale (around 0.20–0.25 standard deviations). In comparison, support for redistribution rises by roughly 0.10 points, with sharper fairness declines and stronger redistributive demands in non-democracies and upper-income economies and near-zero effects in poorer settings. These findings provide causal evidence from a non-Western context that fairness beliefs are highly elastic to large adverse shocks. In contrast, redistributive preferences respond more modestly and are conditioned by regime type and fiscal capacity. The practical implication is that crisis-time welfare design in Asia must focus not only on the generosity and targeting of support but also on transparent, predictable, and procedurally fair delivery in order to sustain perceived legitimacy during periods of widespread hardship.