ABSTRACT
The study explores how children aged 7 and 8 perceive economic inequality, focusing on their representations of wealth and poverty through drawings. Children often depict extreme versions of wealth and poverty. Housing, in particular, is a significant indicator of social status in children’s minds, with rich individuals often depicted as living in mansions and poor individuals as homeless. They associate wealth with ostentation and superficiality, while poverty is linked to kindness and moral virtue. Their representations of wealth and poverty derive from their socialization, or the symbolic recycling of schemes often transmitted to children at home. This view of social stratification tends to minimize inequalities, obscuring the importance of social background in their relationship to other children and adults.
