(Mis-)perception of Inequality:measures, determinants, and consequences

The (negative) effects of inequality on Social Capital

“…Outside the experimenters’ lab, it is often the case that the degree of inequality is not clearly known. In this case, how people perceive inequality is important and empirical evidence shows that people often get it wrong (see, e.g., Jachimowicz et al., 2022; Marandola & Xu, 2021, and references therein), which can have disastrous consequences.…”

“…To this end, we inquire into the latest developments in the experimental literature on the causal effects of inequality on social outcomes such as social trust, cooperation, generosity, and antisocial/unethical behaviors. Inequality induced in the lab is unambiguous, directly observable, and free from issues of misperception (see a discussion in Marandola & Xu, 2021), although it may come with a cost of external validity given its modest size compared to the income/wealth differences in the field. However, one may argue that if relatively modest inequality in the laboratory leads to observable consequences, inequality may have a greater impact outside the lab.…”

Inequality in researchers’ minds: Four guiding questions for studying subjective perceptions of economic inequality

“…These examples illustrate the promise of our framework, and suggest that both ongoing debates and future research may stand to benefit from adopting it. Thus, as illustrated in Table 1, our framework highlights the difficulty of drawing generalized conclusions from studies that fundamentally vary in their measurement and operationalization of subjective perceptions of inequality and the need for broader empirical consensus on how to better measure these (in part drawing on prominent studies described in Knell & Stix, 2020; Marandola & Xu, 2021).…”

“…Specifically, while the increasing availability of large‐scale data sources, combined with increased computational power, has motivated researchers to examine the various correlates and consequences of objective measures of inequality across different levels of analysis (e.g., Blesch et al., 2022; Ngamaba et al., 2018), the same has not been true for research on subjective perceptions of economic inequality. Thus, by relying on large survey modules that measure subjective inequality in broad terms (e.g., the ISSP or WVS; Bavetta et al., 2017, 2020; Gimpelson & Treisman, 2018; Kelley & Evans, 1993, 2017; Niehues, 2014; Osberg & Smeeding, 2006) and by creating ad hoc measures that rarely pay attention to different types of inequality (e.g., Schmalor & Heine, 2022a, 2022b; Sprong et al., 2019), researchers have often traded‐off efficiency for deeper‐level understanding of the nature and drivers of subjective perceptions of inequality (Heiserman & Simpson, 2021; Marandola & Xu, 2021).…”

Procedural fairness and equality of opportunity

“…Much of the public discourse on inequality concerns the unequal distribution of income and wealth. In particular, it is widely discussed whether such distributional inequality is to be considered unfair, whether it is acceptable, and what the potential societal consequences of inequality are (e.g., Fehr et al., 2020; Marandola & Xu, 2021; Piketty, 2014; Scanlon, 2018; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). Although extreme inequality is often considered undesirable per se, “simple equality” (Walzer, 1983), that is, equalizing financial resources, is also often considered both undesirable und unattainable.…”