ABSTRACT
Do conceptions of just rewards vary with economic development? To investigate this question we use the 1999–2000 “Inequality-III” round of the International Social Science Programme, together with other data in the World Inequality Study. There are thirty countries and 19,568 individual respondents in the full-time labor force. We measure inequality by the Gini coefficient for the general public's report of the legitimate earnings for their own occupation. OLS and multilevel analyses show patterns of influences very similar to those found in earlier research, with one striking exception. By far the most important influence, not previously documented across so many countries, is the prosperity of the nation: people in poor nations are much more accepting of inequality than are people in prosperous nations. If this cross-sectional pattern reflects developmental trends, as is likely, then it seems that economic development creates equalitarian attitudes. However, true egalitarianism is not held as ideal in any country, and so is not an appropriate goal for public policy. Instead the ideal level of inequality differs among countries. These ideals are a more appropriate benchmark for policy. We suggest that these benchmarks, available here for 150 nations, should be the starting point for future assessments of income inequality.
Does economic development reshape our attitudes and values as well as our standard of living, occupational distribution, and the like? Karl Marx, one of sociology's founders, thought so: “Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the condition of his material existence …” (Marx and Engels 1848 [1972]: 351). Some prior research is consistent with this hypothesis. For example, multilevel analyses show that economic development lifts subjective social class, net of individual characteristics (Evans and Kelley 2004a). But what about other aspects of inequality-related attitudes, values and perceptions? It is well known that very few people in any modern society yearn for strict equality of earnings 50(Gijsberts 2002; Kelley and Evans 1993; Verwiebe and Wegener 2000), but just how much inequality they consider ideal, and why, is a body of knowledge that is just beginning to develop.
Observers of social inequality beginning with Toqueville have long suspected that there are substantial international differences in ranges of just incomes (Tocqueville 1839). ISSP data from the Inequality-III survey enable us to quantify and systematize these differences.
