Fairness in a Society of Unequal Opportunities

Alexander Cappelen, Yiming Liu, Hedda Nielsen and Bertil Tungodden
Additional contact information
Yiming Liu: HU Berlin, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Hedda Nielsen: HU Berlin

No 506, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: Modern societies are characterized by widespread disparities in opportunities, which play a crucial role in creating income inequality. This paper investigates how individuals handle income inequality arising from these unequal opportunities. We report from a large-scale experimental study involving general populations in the United States and Scandinavia, where participants make consequential redistributive decisions as third-party ‘spectators’ for workers who faced unequal opportunities. Our findings provide strong evidence that a significant majority of people are willing to accept inequality caused by unequal opportunities, a position that markedly contrasts with their responses to inequality caused by luck. Two distinct forces drive greater acceptance of inequality under unequal opportunities: the tendency to mistakenly attribute the impact of unequal opportunities to inherent productivity, and the moral relevance attributed to choice differences caused by unequal opportunities. We further demonstrate a clear societal and political divide in responses to unequal opportunities, with Americans and right-wing voters exhibiting a greater acceptance of the resulting inequality, reflecting both differences in fairness views and attribution biases in these populations.

Keywords: unequal opportunities; inequality acceptance; attribution bias; fairness views (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-exp
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Working Paper: Fairness in a Society of Unequal Opportunities (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rco:dpaper:506

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