When inequality can be tolerated? Determinants of inequality acceptability across social contexts

The Great Recession and Covid-19 pandemic have triggered renewed social, political and academic interest on inequality and redistribution. Although there is a vast literature on the “technical” causes and consequences of inequality, research had been largely ignored how rising inequalities shape individual preferences and values, what could play a crucial role in explaining the evolution and persistence of inequality. This study brings together theories and methodologies from several disciplines to observe which kind of inequalities as seen as acceptable by individuals regarding their socioeconomic status (SES) and societal economic inequality. Literature reports us that individuals will see fairer those inequalities due to productivity or effort rather than those related to luck. Moreover, high-SES subjects tend to accept more inequalities, as well as individuals within a relatively unequal context. Furthermore, literature suggests the existence of a triple interaction effect that would lead high-SES individuals to respond more to changes in productivity in relatively unequal societies. Here, we replicate this analysis using data from a online survey which includes a vignette experiment. The proposed experimental design is well suited to elicit underlying preferences and controlling for the self-interest confound usually present in experiments about distributive justice. This survey instruments was validated against results from incentivized laboratory experiments in Barr et al (2020), which allows us to measure this attitudes towards inequalities using a representative sample from different regions, i.e. societal contexts. Our research will deepen this inequality literature through the use of different measures of socio-economic status, as well as several geographical definitions of inequality. Results tend to confirm above hypothesis about the determinants that push an individual to accept an unequal distribution. Different measures of individual and societal features will help to a better understanding of inequality acceptance and hence of inequality per se.