The Perception of Inequality of Opportunity in Europe

Abstract

Does the way in which scholars measure inequality of opportunity correspond to how people perceive it? What other factors influence individual perception of this phenomenon? To answer these questions, we must first clarify how scholars define and measure inequality of opportunity. We discuss the possible mechanisms linking objective measures to subjective perception of the phenomenon, then propose a measure of perceived inequality of opportunity, and finally test our hypothesis by merging data from two sources: the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2011) and the International Social Survey Programme (2009). We suggest that the prevailing perception of the degree of unequal opportunity in a large sample of respondents is only weakly correlated with its objective measure. We estimate a multilevel model considering both individual-and country-level controls to explain individual perception of unequal opportunity. Our estimates suggest that the two most adopted measures of inequality of opportunity have no clear role in explaining its perception. Conversely, other country-level variables and personal experiences of intergenerational social mobility are important determinants of how inequality of opportunity is perceived. JEL Codes: D63, A14, D31Note: I am grateful to Pasquale Recchia, Tina Rampino, and Raymond Schmelzer for useful comments. Significant improvements were made possible thanks to comments by Peter Blossfeld and three anonymous referees. All errors remain my own.

‘Culture is a Meritocracy’: Why Creative Workers’ Attitudes may Reinforce Social Inequality

“…We use the battery of questions described above about perceived inequality of opportunity, validated in a variety of different national and cross-national contexts (e.g. Brunori, 2015;Hanson and Wells-Dang, 2009;Reynolds and Xian, 2014). In most surveys, the question is asked 'Please tick one box for each of these to show how important you think it is for getting ahead in life …', and presented with a series of items.…”

“…Here, we focus on perceived inequality of opportunity (Brunori, 2015). This dimension is measured by presenting respondents with a battery of items, and asking how important each of those is in terms of getting ahead.…”

“…1 Studies using these batteries of questions tend to find that people's beliefs about inequality are that processes err on the side of fairness, with overall higher scores on items like 'hard work' than 'coming from a wealthy family'. However, this varies internationally, with people in richer countries generally believing that processes are fairer than do people in poorer countries (Brunori, 2015). In addition, men generally perceive greater inequality, as do older people (Hanson and Wells-Dang, 2005), while the relationship between perception of inequality and education varies cross-nationally (Hanson and Wells-Dang, 2009;Reynolds and Xian, 2014).…”

“…The relevance of these attitudes to the CCIs is clear. Brunori (2015) shows that, in general, people in rich societies tend to think those societies are meritocratic. However, if the creative class hypothesis is correct (Florida, 2002), and people working in the CCIs tend to be more left-wing and more liberal than the overall population, with attitudes of tolerance and openness and a commitment to meritocracy, it follows that those people are likely to at least think more critically about who gets ahead.…”

Belief in Social Mobility Mitigates Hostility Resulting From Disadvantaged Social Standing

“…Central Europe and the United States share many social values and equality of opportunity is one of them (e.g., Brunori, 2017; World Values Survey, 2017). Nevertheless, social mobility belief plays an extraordinarily prominent role in the United States (e.g., Brandt, 2013), and thus we were interested in testing the model we established in Studies 1 and 2 in a non-U.S. sample.…”