Wiktionary
a. 1 (context economics English) Describing the theory that financial benefits given to the wealthy will somehow be passed down to the poor 2 That flows, especially in limited quantity, from the highly placed to others.
Usage examples of "trickle-down".
TRICKLE-DOWN IMMORALITY WHEN I WAS SEVENTEEN, I had a job as a busboy at a hotel up in the Catskill Mountains of New York.
On the positive side of the ledger, I had created a National Economic Council in the White House and put together an ambitious economic program to reverse twelve years of trickle-down economics, and it was making progress in the Congress.
Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics.
The trickle-down theory pissing down on everyone for a third time, even though it had failed miserably the first two times around.