The SOECBIAS data set is an output of the interdisciplinary research project SOECBIAS, funded by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Germany and run at the Universität Hamburg. SOECBIAS studies income perceptions and redistributive preferences combining inequality research with social policy and welfare state research, in economics and sociology. SOECBIAS addresses three main questions: How do Europeans perceive national and European social policy? What explains the perception of one’s own income position within the EU income distribution? What are the consequences of these perceptions for the assessment of redistribution measures? The dataset includes a survey experiment in four European countries that investigates the similarity of income perceptions at the supra-national level of the EU and that tests the effect of informing participants about their income position on preferences towards social policy measures in Europe.