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Merit and Blame in Unequal Societies: Explaining Latin Americans’ Beliefs about Wealth and Poverty
Abstract
Popular beliefs about the causes of inequality are often thought to reflect the actual processes behind social stratification. We use the case of Latin America to challenge this assumption. In these rigid and unequal societies, people are more likely to believe that wealth and poverty depend on individual merits or faults rather than structural constraints. Drawing on data from the 2007 Social Cohesion Survey, we use multinomial logistic regression and counterfactual simulation to investigate the factors that drive popular beliefs about wealth and poverty at the individual level, as well its distribution across countries. Our findings provide partial support to theories maintaining that being in an advantaged social position leads to favoring individualistic beliefs. We, however, report a novel effect of social class. More importantly, we show that unobserved country-level factors are the most powerful predictors and the only source of cross-country variation in the distribution of beliefs about the origins of inequality, thus ruling out a compositional explanation for cross-country heterogeneity.
... In addition, a recent study has shown that individuals from Western countries with higher levels of inequality tend to explain success in meritocratic terms (Mijs 2019). A similar conclusion has been drawn for Latin American countries (Bucca 2016), and using experimental evidence (Heiserman and Simpson 2017; Molina, Bucca, and Macy 2019). ...
... Researchers in sociology often turn the motivational hypothesis upside down. They argue that individual status positively predicts the perception of society as meritocratic because individuals seek to legitimize their superiority through a narrative of success (Bucca 2016;Khan 2011). Moreover, high-status individuals reject beliefs that challenge their social position (Kreidl 2000). ...
... Students interpret their scholastic failure based on their position in the educational stratification. The same role has been suggested for meritocratic beliefs legitimizing inequality at country level (Bucca 2016;Mijs 2019). ...
Different research traditions have long held that parental beliefs motivate children's performance. However, regarding meritocratic beliefs, sociologists often argue that meritocratic narratives legitimize and make sense of societal inequalities as justly deserved. Using the case of China, I tested these competing hypotheses of the relationship between parental meritocratic beliefs and children's educational achievement. Parental beliefs about skills and hard work as predictors of higher grades were used. I analyzed data from the first and second waves of the China Educational Panel Survey. Autoregressive cross-lagged structural models indicated that parental meritocratic beliefs do not affect children's educational performance but, rather, meritocratic beliefs are affected by academic results, suggesting their justificatory role. This pattern is much sharper in rural China, where traditional Chinese culture is preserved. The implications of meritocratic beliefs for a broader discussion of citizens' beliefs about social inequalities and stratification are discussed.
... Despite the reality of increasing inequalities, however, the trend has not been accompanied by growing popular concern (Alesina and Glaeser, 2004;Brooks and Manza, 2013;Kenworthy and McCall, 2008;Kuziemko et al., 2015;Larsen, 2016;Lübker, 2007;McCall, 2013). Neither do citizens in more unequal societies express more concern about inequality than those in more egalitarian societies (Bucca, 2016;McCall, 2013;Paskov and Dewilde, 2012;Wietzke, 2016; for a review, see Janmaat, 2013). ...
... On a cognitive level, it may be that people are not well-informed about the trend characterizing their changing societies; they do not know the full extent of it. There is considerable evidence to suggest that people indeed underestimate the degree of inequality in their society-something that is true for Americans as well as citizens of European and Latin American societies (Bucca, 2016;Cruces et al., 2013;Norton and Ariely, 2011;Osberg and Smeeding, 2006). News media may play a part here: McCall (2013) shows that print media in the United States devoted considerable attention to inequality and related themes such as poverty and job insecurity, but that the trend in reporting between 1980 and 2010 did not in any way correspond to actual trends in inequality; if anything, reporting declined since the 1980s, while inequality went up. ...
... Duru-Bellat and Tenret, 2012; Kluegel and Smith, 1986;Larsen, 2016;McCall, 2013;Reynolds and Xian, 2014). The question reads as follows: "Please tick one box for each of [the following] to show how important you think it is for getting ahead in life…" (1) hard work, (2) having ambition, (3) having a good education, (4) coming from a wealthy family, (5) knowing the right people, (6) a person's race, (7) In what follows my focus will be on the first factor-hard work (Bucca, 2016;Kluegel and Smith, 1986;McCall, 2013;Reynolds and Xian, 2014). Hard work is arguably the most meritocratic part of Michael Young's equation, 'Merit = Intelligence + Effort', for the simple fact that intelligence itself is conditioned by a non-meritocratic factor: who your parents happen to be (Mijs, 2016). ...
Inequality is on the rise: gains have been concentrated with a small elite, while most have seen their fortunes stagnate or fall. Despite what scholars and journalists consider a worrying trend, there is no evidence of growing popular concern about inequality. In fact, research suggests that citizens in unequal societies are less concerned than those in more egalitarian societies. How to make sense of this paradox? I argue that citizens’ consent to inequality is explained by their growing conviction that societal success is reflective of a meritocratic process. Drawing on 25 years of International Social Survey Program data, I show that rising inequality is legitimated by the popular belief that the income gap is meritocratically deserved: the more unequal a society, the more likely its citizens are to explain success in meritocratic terms, and the less important they deem nonmeritocratic factors such as a person’s family wealth and connections.
... In a world of rising income and wealth inequalities, meritocracy and social mobility have become two central concerns in both the social sciences and public policy. An increasing body of research has focused on how the position people occupy in the social structure is related to the explanations individuals provide for inequality (De Graaf et al., 1995;Duru et al., 2012, Duru-Bellat andTenret, 2012;Hadler, 2005;Roex et al., 2019) as well as how social mobility shapes people's beliefs related to meritocratic values (Bucca, 2016;Ellemers, 2001;Gugushvili, 2016;Jaime-Castillo and Mareques-Perales, 2014;Wegener and Liebig, 1995). Studying people's own beliefs is significant as they can be a crucial indicator of the legitimacy of a given stratification system, the notions of social justice generally believed in, as well as the potential for social unrest tied to inequality (Kluegel and Smith, 1986). ...
... By contrast, Latin America, the most unequal region in the world (López and Perry, 2008), has remained strikingly under-researched. The scarce literature available on this region reveals a disconcerting paradox: restricted social mobility linked to high inequality coexists with elevated perceptions of socioeconomic meritocracy (Bucca, 2016). Yet, survey-based research, while offering the possibility of identifying distinctive patterns regarding beliefs about inequality and meritocratic values in Latin American societies, also risks neglecting the contextual specificities and the meaning-making processes in which these phenomena are embedded. ...
... Latin America societies still remained surprisingly under-researched. However, the scarce literature on the region reveals an unexpected paradox: in these unequal and rigid societies, people's beliefs on wealth and poverty are attributed to individual merits or faults rather than structural restrictions (Bucca, 2016). In other words, limited social mobility, especially at the upper echelons of the social structure, coexists with a high perception of socioeconomic meritocracy. ...
In a world of rising income and wealth inequalities, studying popular concern or consent about inequality, social mobility and meritocracy is increasingly relevant. However, while there is growing body of research on the explanations individuals provide for inequality in the US and Europe, there is a striking absence of studies addressing how people experiencing long-range upward mobility relate to meritocratic values in Latin American societies. In this article I draw upon on 60 life-course interviews to examine how long-range upwardly mobile individuals – those who best embody the meritocratic ideal – explain their success in Chilean society. Internationally well-known for the implementation of radical neoliberal reforms since the mid 1970s, Chile has both elevated levels of inequality and high rates of occupational mobility. Contrary to the individual-centred approach to meritocratic success dominant in the existing literature, my findings reveal a strong collective framing in respondents’ accounts and the acknowledgement of external factors shaping their upward trajectories. These findings bear important conceptual, methodological and geographical implications for the future study of social mobility and meritocratic values.
... En la segunda, al contrario, serían patrones estructurales como el sistema económico o político, los cuales explicarían las raíces de la pobreza. Esta dicotomía entre creencias individualistas y estructuralistas (Kluegel y Smith 1986) ha sido sostenida por la mayor parte de los estudios empíricos hasta la fecha, especialmente en la literatura sobre atribuciones de pobreza (Schneider y Castillo 2015;Cozzarelli, Wilkinson y Tagler 2001), o de riqueza y pobreza (Kreidl 2000;Bucca 2016). Menos relevante, pero no por ello ausente ha sido la incorporación de una dimensión fatalista, donde la suerte o el destino son responsable tanto de la buena como de la mala fortuna (Feagin 1972;van Oorschot y Halman 2000;Gugushvili 2016). ...
... La literatura sobre atribuciones ha estado normalmente conectada a las discusiones sobre la legitimación y creencias de la desigualdad (Kluegel y Smith 1986;Schneider y Castillo 2015;Bucca 2016). Atribuciones de carácter individualista supondrían una legitimación de las diferencias sociales en torno a una idea de justicia meritocrática, donde aquel que se esfuerza más, recibe más. ...
... Ahora bien, no es del todo claro que las atribuciones internas y externas se comporten siempre como polos opuestos. Así por lo menos lo han planteado diversas investigaciones (Hunt 1996;Kreidl 2000;Osborne y Weiner 2015), enfatizando el hecho de que individuos pueden sostener perspectivas individualistas y estructuralistas simultáneamente (Bucca 2016;Osborne y Weiner 2015). También otros autores han evidenciado que en algunas circunstancias se pueden favorecer interpretaciones individualistas sobre aquellas estructuralistas en el caso de la riqueza, pero al contrario para entender la pobreza (Hunt 2004). ...
El estudio de las atribuciones de pobreza y riqueza ha tenido un rol central en la literatura sobre la justificación de las desigualdades sociales. La investigación en esta área ha explorado en qué medida se usan razones individualistas versus estructuralistas para explicar por qué ciertas personas logran posiciones más precarias o aventajadas que el resto. En esa línea, este artículo busca dar cuenta de cómo cambian en el tiempo estas razones, en el contexto de una sociedad que ha tenido grandes transformaciones estructurales en las últimas décadas, donde además se mantiene una alta desigualdad de ingresos, como es el caso de la sociedad chilena. Tomando dos encuestas con representatividad nacional de los años 1996 y 2015, los resultados indican en un primer nivel descriptivo que han aumentado las atribuciones individualistas sobre el origen de la pobreza y la riqueza —tales como la falta de esfuerzo y la iniciativa personal— y que han bajado las razones de carácter estructural —como el desempleo o las políticas económicas—. No obstante, a través de un análisis de clases latentes (LCA), se ofrece una segunda aproximación más matizada a este fenómeno, mostrando que la baja de atribuciones estructurales se asocia al aumento de personas que atribuyen tanto razones individualistas como estructurales a la pobreza y riqueza, predominando una combinación de ambas a la hora de significar estos hechos. Estos cambios en los patrones de atribución se discuten en el marco de las transformaciones económicas y culturales de la sociedad chilena.
... Therefore, social structure should also be included in interpreting the role of meritocratic beliefs. Bucca (2016) pointed out that two explanations have been provided for the higher endorsement of meritocratic beliefs by socially advantaged individuals. First, individuals from a higher social class will seek to legitimize their social position as deserved. ...
... Parents' occupation is used as the measure of parents' class status. Following the tradition in stratification research since Blau and Duncan (1967), and sociological research in the Chinese context Thus, studies on meritocratic beliefs have focused on individual effort as the true meritocratic component of meritocracy (Mijs 2019;Bucca 2016). In this study, we consider both measures independently. ...
... Low-class parents in urban school do not translate their meritocratic beliefs into concerted cultivation practices as middle-and upper-class parents do, because they are aware of their disadvantage. This may derive from a more realistic appraisal of structural inequalities as research on the differential hypothesis has argued (Bucca 2016;Hyman 1953;Lockwood 1966;Wegener 1991). However, in rural China, meritocratic beliefs operate in the opposite direction, which is explained by the value of education in rural areas (Kong 2016). ...
Concerted cultivation practices are not only explained by parents’ objective resources, but also by parents’ cultural orientations, which are associated with social class. While cultural orientations of parenting styles in Western societies have been studied, the role of beliefs in social reproduction in other parts of the world is still under-researched. The aim of this study was to understand whether social class and meritocratic beliefs of Chinese parents affect their parenting style with regard to children’s education and learning. Our findings suggest that both meritocratic beliefs and social class have a positive effect on concerted cultivation practices. The effect of parents’ meritocratic beliefs on parenting style is stronger than the effect of social class for boys and urban schools. In addition, meritocratic beliefs reduce class differentials in rural schools, but increase them in urban schools. We discuss the effectiveness of meritocratic beliefs promoting child-rearing practices regardless of the social origin.
... Understanding popular support for public spending is a major goal of welfare state research across social policy, sociology, and political science. One important strand of this work is the deservingness literature, which aims to understand how support for welfare spending is conditional on public perceptions of the behaviour and attributes of (potential) recipients (Van Van Oorschot and Roosma, 2017), and how such perceptions are shaped by individual economic position (Bucca, 2016;Kallio and Kouvo, 2015), political values (Van Oorschot, Reeskens and Meuleman, 2012), and economic or institutional context (Laenen, 2018;Larsen, 2007). This research draws on macro-comparative studies in the tradition of Esping-Andersen's Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990) and Hall and Soskice's Varieties of Capitalism (2001) in order to understand how systematic cross-national differences in the institutional structures of welfare states influences public support through mechanisms such as policy feedback and path dependency (Korpi and Palme, 1998;Larsen, 2007;Pierson, 1998Pierson, , 2000. ...
... The cultural class analysis literature has a strong focus on the UK context, and ideas of welfare deservingness have been most thoroughly explored in rich Western European countries with highly developed 24 For attempts to measure stigmatising attitudes towards welfare recipients over a longer time period than available in repeated cross-sectional surveys such the British Social Attitudes survey, see Hudson and colleagues (Hudson et al., 2016b). Similarly, there have been surveys of attitudes towards the poor in Latin America (Bucca, 2016) and Central Asia (Habibov, 2011). welfare states such as the Netherlands or Scandinavian countries. ...
... Similar arguments are made in quantitative work on beliefs about meritocracy or the causes of poverty, where more advantaged individuals are generally more likely to attribute individual wealth or poverty to individualistic factors(Bucca, 2016;Gugushvili, 2016;Mijs, 2019). ...
In this thesis I investigate how an individual’s economic position and the context they live in affects their sympathy for the poor. Poverty and welfare receipt are stigmatised across high income countries; such attitudes reduce support for redistribution and exacerbate the negative impact of poverty on wellbeing. Across three empirical chapters, I use attitudinal data from the UK and Europe to investigate the relationship between individual advantage, broader economic context, and the prevalence of stigmatising stereotypes about welfare recipients and the poor. I apply an innovative perspective combining qualitative research on the experiences of people in poverty and comparative political economy work on inequality and redistribution to address neglected topics in the study of deservingness perceptions. In the first empirical chapter I argue that those in more disadvantaged economic positions have more sympathetic attitudes towards welfare recipients. However, this relationship is counteracted by the role of social status and authoritarian attitudes, which can make the disadvantaged hold less sympathetic views. The second chapter uses survey data from twenty-seven European countries to show that individuals in more unequal nations are more likely to believe that laziness rather than injustice is the cause of poverty. I argue that a plausible explanation of this relationship is status anxiety among disadvantaged individuals. In the third chapter I conduct the first longitudinal analysis of the association between area level unemployment and attitudes towards the unemployed, finding little evidence of a meaningful effect of exposure on stigmatising stereotypes. Overall, this thesis argues that status anxiety plays a major role in shaping stigmatising stereotypes, explaining why people are less sympathetic towards the poor in high inequality contexts, and why disadvantaged individuals often hold especially negative attitudes.
... In addition, a recent study has shown (Mijs 2019) that Western countries with higher inequality tend to explain success in meritocratic terms. A similar conclusion has been drawn for Latin American countries (Bucca 2016). In the case of China, a high level of inequality (Xie and Zhou 2014) and social fluidity (Zhou and Xie 2019) by international standards bring the justificatory role of meritocratic narratives, alongside his hypothesized motivational effect, into sharper relief. ...
... Researches in sociology often put the motivational hypothesis upside down. They argue that individual status predicts positively the endorsement of meritocratic beliefs because of the legitimation of their superiority through a narrative of success (see Bucca 2016). Moreover, high-status individuals (high-income and those who enjoy s high subjective status) will refuse beliefs that challenge their social position (Kreidl 2000). ...
... Students make sense of their scholastic failure based on their position in the educational stratification. The same role has been suggested for meritocratic beliefs legitimizing inequality at the country-level (Bucca 2016;Mijs 2019). ...
Different research traditions have long stated that parental meritocratic beliefs motivate children’s educational achievement. However, sociologists often argue that meritocratic narratives legitimize and make sense of societal inequalities as justly deserved. Using the case of China, I tested simultaneously these two competing hypotheses of the relationship between parental meritocratic beliefs and children’s educational achievement. In particular, I distinguished parental beliefs about hard work and skills as predictors of higher grades. I analyzed data from the first and second waves of the China Educational Panel Survey (CEPS). Autoregressive cross-lagged structural models indicated that parental meritocratic beliefs do not affect the educational performance of children. Instead, meritocratic beliefs are affected by academic results suggesting a justificatory role of them. This pattern is much sharper in rural China, where traditional Chinese culture is preserved. The implications of meritocratic beliefs for a broader discussion of citizens’ beliefs about social inequalities and stratification were discussed.
... Examinando ese punto, el mérito -la valoración de lo que los individuos hacen-es una de las razones esgrimidas por las personas al evaluar la justicia distributiva (Evans, Kelley y Peoples, 2010;Janmaat, 2014;Castillo, 2011;Bucca, 2016). Sin embargo, en este trabajo también estudiamos si los individuos evalúan aspectos asociados al capital cultural y social (Bourdieu, 1979) al juzgar los ingresos de diferentes posiciones sociales. ...
... El vínculo entre esa desigualdad estructural y la justicia social también fue examinado (González, 2006), pero en general hubo una menor atención a las percepciones y creencias acerca de lo (in)justo. Estudios empíricos más recientes abordan las desigualdades enfatizando en las percepciones sobre justicia distributiva (Garretón y Cumsille, 2003;Székely, 2005;Dieterlen, 2005;Cardoso, 2004;Scalon, 2007;Costa, 2009;Castillo, 2011;Araujo, 2016; Mac-Clure y Barozet, 2016;Bucca, 2016;PNUD, 2017). En este marco, nuestra investigación aborda la justicia social desde la perspectiva del juicio de los individuos sobre las desigualdades entre posiciones sociales, estudiando en qué medida operan múltiples principios de justicia. ...
... A la hora de juzgar subjetivamente las diferencias de ingresos entre personas, el mérito como principio de justicia distributiva se esgrime preferentemente en diversos países incluido Chile (Evans, Kelley y Peoples, 2010;Janmaat, 2014;Castillo, 2011;Bucca, 2016). La calidad del trabajo individual, medida con información sobre años de escolaridad, esfuerzo y resultados en el desempeño laboral, permitiría evaluar subjetivamente como justa una diferencia en los ingresos obtenidos por las personas. ...
RESUMEN Este artículo estudia las evaluaciones subjetivas de la justicia social en Chile, un país en el cualprevalecen pronunciadas desigualdades sociales al igual que en el resto de América Latina. Analizamos empíricamente las percepciones sobre lo justo y lo injusto en relación con los ingresos de distintas posiciones sociales, buscando responder la pregunta acerca de qué principios de justica aplican las personas. Los resultados muestran que además del mérito individual vinculado al esfuerzo en la educación y en el trabajo, las personas consideran otros principios de justicia, referidos al capital cultural y social, así como al trato en la interacción social. La incidencia de estos principios de justicia varía dependiendo de las posiciones sociales juzgadas y de las características socioeconómicas de los encuestados. Los datos provienen de una encuesta basada en viñetas, aplicada en el año 2016 a una muestra de 2.000 individuos estadísticamente representativa de la población chilena.
... Despite the reality of increasing inequalities, however, the trend has not been accompanied by growing popular concern (Alesina and Glaeser, 2004;Lü bker, 2007;Kenworthy and McCall, 2007;Brooks and Manza, 2013;McCall, 2013;Kuziemko et al., 2015;Larsen, 2016). Neither do citizens in more unequal societies express more concern about inequality than those in more egalitarian societies (Paskov and Dewilde, 2012;McCall, 2013;Bucca, 2016;Wietzke, 2016; for a review, see Janmaat, 2013). How to make sense of this paradox? ...
... On a cognitive level, it may be that people are not well-informed about the trend characterizing their changing societies; they do not know the full extent of it. There is considerable evidence to suggest that people indeed underestimate the degree of inequality in their society-something that is true for Americans as well as citizens of European and Latin American societies (Osberg and Smeeding, 2006;Norton and Ariely, 2011;Cruces et al., 2013;Bucca, 2016). News media may play a part here: McCall (2013) shows that print media in the USA devoted considerable attention to inequality and related themes such as poverty and job insecurity, but that the trend in reporting between 1980 and 2010 did not in any way correspond to actual trends in inequality; if anything, reporting declined since the 1980s while inequality went up. ...
... In what follows my focus will be on the first factor-hard work (Kluegel and Smith, 1986;McCall, 2013;Reynolds and Xian, 2014;Bucca, 2016). Hard work is arguably the most meritocratic part of Michael Young's equation, 'Merit ¼ Intelligence þ Effort', for the simple fact that intelligence itself is conditioned by a nonmeritocratic factor: who your parents happen to be (Mijs, 2016). ...
Inequality is on the rise: gains have been concentrated with a small elite, while most have seen their fortunes stagnate or fall. Despite what scholars and journalists consider a worrying trend, there is no evidence of growing popular concern about inequality. In fact, research suggests that citizens in unequal societies are less concerned than those in more egalitarian societies. How to make sense of this paradox? I argue that citizens’ consent to inequality is explained by their growing conviction that societal success is reflective of a meritocratic process. Drawing on 25-years of International Social Survey Programme data, I show that rising inequality is legitimated by the popular belief that the income gap is meritocratically deserved: the more unequal a society, the more likely its citizens are to explain success in meritocratic terms, and the less important they deem non-meritocratic factors such as a person’s family wealth and connections.
... As Bourdieu and Khan argue, the merit or ability recognized by society is actually the fruit of long-term investments by families in cultural capital and the construct of the educational system [35,36]. Meritocracy, however, obscures the connection between merit and privilege and instills a belief in merit [37]. The belief in meritocracy leads to decreased concern about social inequality. ...
... The social context and school environment also shape teachers' beliefs in meritocracy. For example, in East Asian societies with a long tradition of meritocracy, teachers rarely question the relationships among personal effort, education, and elite positions [37]. ...
China has a long history of meritocracy, but as social inequality grows, people are increasingly questioning whether hard work promises a better life, even as national policies and mainstream media spare no effort to promote meritocratic narratives. In response, how do people interpret their lives and act within the conflict context between social realities and political forces? On the basis of semi-structured interviews with teachers in different types of schools, this paper explores how teachers interpret meritocracy and navigate it in their teaching practices. The results indicate that teachers show a dual attitude toward meritocracy. On the one hand, they believe that effort and ability are crucial to occupational and educational success, yet on the other hand, they also acknowledge the influence of guanxi on employment and the noticeable educational disparities caused by family background. Teachers have different approaches to balancing meritocratic and nonmeritocratic factors in their teaching. Teachers who limit their responsibilities regarding student growth offer verbal advice. The majority of teachers guide students to focus on working to redress the gap derived from nonmeritocratic factors while also warning students not to place too much hope on agency. Teachers’ practices inevitably contribute to social inequality. This paper underscores that in an environment lacking redistribution mechanisms, meritocracy for teachers is more of a pragmatic calculation than a belief.
... These include family background, the nature of the economic model, and the education system. In several countries studied, including in Latin America, around half of individuals perceive that income and wealth are determined by a combination of meritocratic factors and barriers to merit (Bucca, 2016;Frei et al., 2020;Espinoza et al., 2023;Lepianka et al., 2009). ...
... Some argue that a lower income fosters a more marked perception of injustice based on individual merit (Castillo et al., 2019;Mijs & Hoy, 2021). However, contrary to what one might expect, some authors argue that individuals with a higher level of education attribute inequality to structural rather than meritocratic factors, which could be due to the "illustration hypothesis" (Bucca, 2016;Kluegel & Smith, 1986). ...
This paper examines individual's evaluation of distributive justice in Chile. The objective is to explore how individuals' subjective social position affects their judgment of their own income and whether this judgment rests on a notion of merit. We use data from a vignette-based survey to analyze evaluations by a representative sample of people from three urban areas. The results show that an evaluation of unfairness with respect to their income prevails among the respondents, especially among those who identify themselves as belonging to the lower or lower-middle social stratum. These differences between subjective social positions become even more pronounced when individuals elaborate their judgment by including a meritocratic criterion based on the effort to educate themselves. However, no significant differences in justice evaluations are observed between objective social positions based on income or education. Our findings underscore the importance of subjective social position in people's evaluations of distributive justice.
... Entre ellos se mencionan el origen familiar, la organización del aparato económico y el sistema educativo. En varios países, incluyendo latinoamericanos, se observa que alrededor de la mitad de los individuos percibe que en la determinación de los ingresos y la riqueza coexisten factores meritocráticos junto con barreras al mérito (Bucca, 2016;Frei et al., 2020;Espinoza et al., 2023;Lepianka et al., 2009). ...
... Se sostiene que un menor ingreso tiene como efecto una percepción más marcada de injusticia con base en el mérito individual (Castillo et al., 2019;Mijs y Hoy, 2021). Sin embargo, a pesar de lo que se podría esperar, se ha sostenido que quienes tienen un nivel educacional más elevado atribuyen la desigualdad a factores estructurales más que meritocráticos, lo cual podría deberse a la denominada "hipótesis de la ilustración" (Bucca, 2016;Kluegel y Smith, 1986). ...
Este artículo se refiere a la evaluación de los individuos acerca de la justicia distributiva en Chile. El objetivo consiste en examinar cómo la posición social subjetiva de las personas afecta su juicio respecto a sus propios ingresos y si este juicio descansa en la noción de mérito. Usamos datos provenientes de una encuesta basada en viñetas, para conocer las apreciaciones por parte de individuos de una muestra representativa de tres áreas urbanas. Los resultados muestran que entre los encuestados prevalece una evaluación de injusticia con respecto de sus ingresos, especialmente entre quienes se identifican como pertenecientes a un estrato social bajo o medio-bajo. Estas diferencias entre posiciones sociales subjetivas se hacen aún más fuertes cuando los individuos elaboran su juicio incluyendo un criterio meritocrático basado en el esfuerzo por educarse. Sin embargo, no se observan diferencias significativas en las evaluaciones de justicia al comparar entre posiciones sociales objetivas basadas en ingreso o educación. Nuestros hallazgos relevan la importancia de la posición social subjetiva en las evaluaciones que realizan las personas sobre la justicia distributiva.
... Later works have explored how individuals conceive meritocracy, to what extent they support this idea, and which are the effects of this endorsement on different societal outcomes (Bucca, 2016;Mijs & Hoy, 2021;Roex et al., 2019). A general overview shows that the percentage of people that believe in meritocracy has grown in almost every country in the world since the '80 s. ...
... The first step in understanding the relationship between meritocratic values and socioeconomic backgrounds is to see how much individuals in each group believe in meritocracy (Bucca, 2016;Mijs, 2019). Most of this literature sustains that individuals who come from more privileged socioeconomic groups will be more likely to assume that their social position is product of hard work and therefore, will hold strong meritocratic beliefs (McCoy & Major, 2007). ...
Individuals’ perceptions of how the path toward success is built might affect their choices and behaviors. This study examines whether holding meritocratic beliefs has heterogeneous effects on the long-term socioeconomic outcomes of individuals from different SES. I argue that, when the hurdles faced by the less privileged groups during their educational and labor market trajectories clash with their meritocratic beliefs, the generated frustration and low self-efficacy will affect their decisions and their performance, which eventually may impact their socioeconomic outcomes. Using German longitudinal data and siblings' fixed effects, results reveal that individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds who hold strong meritocratic beliefs during their adolescence are more likely to have a precarious work situation when they are adults, as well as less likely to be fully working. This effect is reversed or non-existent for those from high socioeconomic status. These results open new paths to explore the crucial effect that societal discourses praising the meritocratic ideal could have on individuals from more deprived socioeconomic backgrounds.
... The cultural industries create tastes and trends of the masses, so it creates awareness of false needs. Bucca (2016) ...
... The resistance values in the lyrics of the song are the resistance that represents the Palestinians. The resistance values carried in the lyrics of Rap songs had their influences in the world both nationally and internationally (Bucca, 2016). Simmel's (1908) concept of distance comes into play. ...
The present study addressed the popular beliefs in the Palestinian society Popular belief practices were evaluated using an index of a 39-item scale developed by the researchers, and were administrated to 1,066 Palestinians in the West Bank, Palestine, during 2022. The sample population was selected via the stratified random selection method. Study findings revealed that almost three quarters of the participants (71.6%) experienced a moderate level of popular belief practices in their daily life. The study indicated that gender, educational level, age and the degree of religiosity were significant predictors
of popular belief practices. The consequences of the study findings for prac�tice were highlighted.
Keywords Popular Beliefs, Practices, Traditions, Faith, Culture, Palestine
... Analysis of individual differences within countries finds that similar beliefs that emphasize egalitarian values are associated with greater intolerance for wealth inequality, while beliefs that emphasize the functional aspects of inequality are associated with greater tolerance with inequality (Hadler, 2005). Other individual-level beliefs such as presumptions about the causes of inequality (Bucca, 2016) and the relative role of the individual (vs. society) in causing poverty (Wu & Chou, 2015) also influence whether wealth inequality is perceived to be fair. ...
... Los análisis de las diferencias individuales dentro de un mismo país revelan que las creencias similares que ponen de relieve valores igualitarios están asociadas con un mayor nivel de intolerancia ante la desigualdad económica, mientras que las creencias que enfatizan los aspectos funcionales de la desigualdad están asociadas con una mayor tolerancia de la desigualdad (Hadler, 2005). Otras creencias individuales como las presunciones sobre las causas de la desigualdad (Bucca, 2016) y el papel relativo del individuo (frente a la sociedad) en las causas de la pobreza (Wu & Chou, 2015) también influyen en la percepción de la desigualdad económica como justa o injusta. Creer que los límites entre las clases socioeconómicas son rígidos y que la movilidad social ascendente es imposible conduce a la percepción de que la desigualdad económica es injusta y carece de justificación (Shariff et al., 2016). ...
As people’s concerns about wealth inequality have not grown even as warnings are raised about its negative impact on societies and individuals, research has inquired into factors that influence people’s tolerance towards wealth inequalities. Previous research has shown that higher social position and meritocracy beliefs tend to reduce concern for wealth inequality. Two studies seek to replicate these findings in the Philippines, a country which reports high levels of tolerance for inequality but which does not fit models that explain country differences in tolerance for inequality. In Study 1, survey data showed meritocracy beliefs were negatively related to intolerance towards wealth inequality; this relationship was found only among higher subjective social class Filipinos. In Study 2, an experiment found that priming meritocracy reduced intolerance towards wealth inequality in a sample of higher social class Filipino. Results provide country-specific evidence on the inequality-legitimizing effects of meritocracy on higher subjective social class Filipinos’ attitudes towards wealth inequality.
... Do people in non-Western countries respond to information about inequality in similar ways? Comparative studies of inequality beliefs describe important differences between Western and non-Western societies (Bucca 2016;Duru-Bellat and Tenret 2012;Larsen 2016;Telles and Bailey 2013;Whyte 2016). At the same time, they suggest that (1) inequality beliefs across societies are similarly understood in meritocratic and non-meritocratic terms (Bucca 2016;Telles and Bailey 2013); (2) they vary more strongly within than between countries (Duru-Bellat and Tenret 2012; Larsen 2016); and, substantively, (3) cultural beliefs about social mobility in countries like China are so optimistic as to rival the American Dream (Whyte 2016). ...
... Comparative studies of inequality beliefs describe important differences between Western and non-Western societies (Bucca 2016;Duru-Bellat and Tenret 2012;Larsen 2016;Telles and Bailey 2013;Whyte 2016). At the same time, they suggest that (1) inequality beliefs across societies are similarly understood in meritocratic and non-meritocratic terms (Bucca 2016;Telles and Bailey 2013); (2) they vary more strongly within than between countries (Duru-Bellat and Tenret 2012; Larsen 2016); and, substantively, (3) cultural beliefs about social mobility in countries like China are so optimistic as to rival the American Dream (Whyte 2016). ...
Most people misperceive economic inequality. Learning about actual levels of inequality and social mobility, research suggests, heightens concerns but may push people’s policy preferences in any number of directions. This mixed empirical record, we argue, reflects the omission of a more fundamental question: under what conditions do people change their understanding of the meritocratic or non-meritocratic causes of inequality? To explore mechanisms of belief change we field a unique randomized survey experiment with representative populations in Australia, Indonesia, and Mexico—societies with varying levels of popular beliefs about economic inequality. Our results highlight the importance of information, perceived social position, and self-interest. In Indonesia, information describing (high) income inequality and (low) social mobility rocked our participants’ belief in meritocracy. The same information made less of a splash in Mexico, where unequal outcomes are commonly understood as the result of corruption and other non-meritocratic processes. In Australia, the impact of our informational treatment was strongest when it provided justification for people’s income position or when it corrected their perception of relative affluence. Our findings reveal asymmetric beliefs about poverty and wealth and heterogeneous responses to information. They are a call to rethink effective informational and policy interventions.
... Despite high income inequality and limited social mobility in Chile, and in Latin America in general, there is a prevalent belief that individuals are solely responsible for their economic outcomes, a view that varies across the region [42][43][44][45]. The reliance on private welfare providers and widespread user fees [46] adds complexity to this context, as reflected in surveys conducted by the Center for Public Studies (CEP). ...
Previous research has shown that schools often justify student performance differences using meritocratic ideals. One potential consequence of such ideals is the legitimization of outcome inequalities across various spheres, including those traditionally associated with equality and redistribution. In this study, we argue that the promotion of meritocratic values during school age can shape students’ beliefs about meritocracy and influence their views on market-based access to health, pensions, and education. Using data from the 2017 National Study of Civic Education in Chile, which includes 5047 eighth-grade students from 231 schools, we estimated a series of multilevel models (lme4 library, R version 4.1.3) to test our hypotheses. Our findings show that a significant proportion of Chilean students agree with market justice principles—more so than adults. Most students endorse meritocratic views, particularly the notion that effort should be rewarded, which strongly correlates with market justice preferences: students who believe in meritocracy are more likely to justify inequalities based on financial capacity. At the school level, market justice preferences are higher in high-status schools but lower in schools with higher academic achievement. Furthermore, the conditional influence of meritocratic beliefs diminishes in schools with higher socioeconomic status and performance levels. These results suggest that the association between meritocratic beliefs and market justice preferences is already established at school age and is shaped by the school environment.
... Contrario a lo que sucede en otras partes del mundo, en América Latina las personas tienden a pensar que la riqueza y la desigualdad depende de méritos individuales en vez de las rígidas condiciones estructurales que caracterizan a la región (Bucca, 2016). Lo anterior se podría explicar a partir del estado económico en América Latina, caracterizado como el más desigual del mundo, lo que nos lleva hacia el individualismo para intentar sobrevivir a la amenaza de la desigualdad (Krys et al., 2022). ...
En la última década, una serie de investigaciones han generado evidencia de las diferencias existentes entre las actitudes hacia la desigualdad y la desigualdad objetiva (Osberg y Smeeding, 2006; Castillo, 2012a; García-Castro, García-Sánchez, et al., 2022). La evaluación de la desigualdad se refiere al grado en que las personas perciben la distribución desigual de riqueza, ingresos y otros recursos socioeconómicos dentro de una sociedad. Estas diferencias muchas veces se producen por acceso diferencial a información, pero también están asociadas a factores como valoraciones, creencias y percepciones sobre la sociedad que podrían minimizar o aumentar los niveles de desigualdad económica percibida.
... Some empirical evidence supports these theories (Duru-Bellat & Tenret, 2012;Reynolds & Xian, 2014). However, other evidence shows the opposite (Bucca, 2016;Li & Hu, 2021;Xian & Reynolds, 2017). The inconsistency in these findings can be attributed to variations in datasets, measurement strategies, and national contexts. ...
This study employs latent class analysis (LCA) as a novel methodology to investigate the multidimensional nature of meritocratic beliefs, addressing the limitations of traditional unidimensional approaches. Using data from the International Social Survey Program 2009 for the United States, Finland, and China, this study demonstrates several advantages of this multidimensional approach. First, LCA effectively identifies dual consciousness, where individuals simultaneously endorse meritocratic and structuralist explanations of social stratification. The analysis reveals three distinct narratives explaining social stratification: purely meritocratic beliefs, predominantly meritocratic beliefs, and dual consciousness. While all three subtypes consider merits highly important, they differ in their perceived importance of structural factors. Second, LCA facilitates cross‐national comparisons, unveiling qualitative typological variations in meritocratic beliefs across countries. Unique country‐specific subtypes or patterns emerge: Finland exhibits purely meritocratic beliefs, the United States shows predominantly meritocratic beliefs, and China demonstrates a dominance of dual consciousness. Although dual consciousness exists in all three countries, its prevalence varies significantly—dominant in China, moderate in the United States, and least in Finland. Third, this study reveals that the effect of education on meritocratic beliefs varies across the three countries. Education strengthens individual meritocratic beliefs in the United States, weakens them in Finland, and shows no significant effect in China. These findings highlight both within‐country and across‐country heterogeneity of meritocratic beliefs, underscoring the importance of a multidimensional approach.
... In Study 1, although we attempted to reduce the difficulty of mobility estimation, some of the perceptual bias could be explained by simple estimation errors. In Study 2, we controlled for some of the limitations of Study 1 by operationalizing social mobility beliefs through a subtraction using the SSS scale scores (Adler et al., 2000), as has been used in previous studies (Bucca, 2016;Du et al., 2021;Gimpelson & Monusova, 2014;Mijs et al., 2022). However, this approach may also have some limitations. ...
Cognitive biases affect how people perceive social class mobility. Previous studies suggest that people find it difficult to estimate actual economic social mobility accurately. These results have also noted differences between regions. While in the United States people overestimate actual economic social mobility, in Europe people tend to underestimate it. Across two independent cross-sectional studies, we examined whether cognitive biases operate in the Spanish context and, if so, whether they depend on the type of social mobility. In Study 1 (N = 480), we tested whether people in Spain have an accurate estimation of actual upward economic societal mobility. The results showed that people in Spain have a pessimistic view of upward societal mobility. In Study 2 (N = 274), we analyzed whether people in Spain are more or less optimistic according to the type of social mobility: personal vs. societal. We found that Spaniards are more optimistic when estimating their own mobility (i.e., personal mobility) than when estimating the mobility of the Spanish society (i.e., societal mobility). Contrary to our predictions, we found that meritocratic beliefs do not play a relevant role in determining any type of social mobility. These results extend previous research on social mobility and its psychosocial consequences. Furthermore, they are well aligned with a new psychosocial perspective suggesting that social mobility is a multidimensional construct. We also discussed the psychosocial implications of this optimistic bias for personal mobility.
... This seems especially true in fairness research, where the most popular task is income prediction with the Adult dataset [42]. Among formally protected attributes, property is uniquely associated with a perception of mutability and merit: people tend to associate wealth and poverty with individual merit rather than structural constraints [18,57]. This perception fuels the discourse on deservingness, seeking to distinguish between deserving and undeserving poor people, which determines the boundaries of admissible redistribution policies [8,106]. ...
... This article examines how cultural capital operates in higher education in Colombia, a highly unequal society with significant class inequalities and limited class mobility (Angulo et al., 2012;García et al., 2015). In this country, huge structural inequalities are accompanied by a strong belief in meritocracy and in the power of education for social mobility (Bucca, 2016), and by a low level of working class identity and pride (Álvarez-Rivadulla & Corredor, 2022). We explore the perceptions, experiences, and interactions of low-income, high-achieving students who participate in a forgivable loan program for higher education at elite universities ("Ser Pilo Paga"). ...
... This paper takes into account three particular sets of determinants: socio-economic and demographic characteristics, feelings of resentment, and ideological values. As the most common factor, several studies have shown that the well-off, for instance, tend to harbour more individualistic beliefs, while lowstatus groups tend to blame society for their hardship (Bucca, 2016). However, self-interest has limited explanatory capability for the poverty explanations individuals adopt (Kluegel and Smith, 1986;Cozzarelli et al., 2001;Nasser et al., 2005;Lepianka et al., 2010). ...
This study examines which poverty attributions are present in Guyana, a developing country in South America, and tests which variables explain these attributions in a non-Western context by linking them to structural characteristics, feelings of resentment, and values. First, using survey data from the Values and Poverty Study in Guyana ( N = 1,557), we find that the traditional three-tier model does not adequately capture Guyanese attributions of poverty. Instead, confirmatory factor analysis identifies some subdimensions of structural attributions that refer to both social and economic structure, a hybrid dimension linking poverty to family breakup, and explanations related to social and individual fate. Second, we examine the impact of feelings of resentment on poverty attributions. In particular, experiences of powerlessness foster structural, fatalistic, and family attributions of poverty, illustrating the role of a lack of external locus of control. Finally, our study shows that ideological values and egalitarianism have the strongest predictive power.
... However, Latin America has placed itself as a scenario that questions the applicability and universality of the mainstream self-interest approach (Dion & Birchfield, 2010). Indeed, it has been found that unlike in developed countries (Finseraas, 2009;Gijsberts, 2002;Schmidt-Catran, 2016), in Latin America, attitudes toward inequality are not primarily determined by the objective socioeconomic position of individuals (Berens, 2015;Bucca, 2016;Franetovic & Castillo, 2021). Scholars have highlighted the relevance of social affinity and political attitudes in peoples' attitudes toward inequality across the region. ...
This article constitutes the first application of the attitude network approach to peoples' views on inequality. We adopt a network model in which nodes represent survey variables and edges their conditional associations. This allows us to conceptualize perceptions, beliefs, and judgments about inequality as a network of connected evaluative reactions. We analyze data from the 2019 ISSP Social Inequality Module for Chile, one of the most unequal countries in the world. Relying on a network approach, we systematically analyze the wide-ranging indicators measuring subjective inequality. Results show that conceptions regarding inequality, redistribution, taxation, and wages form a moderately connected unified belief system with a small-world structure. In addition, we stratify the sample by education, income, and social class, obtaining six attitude networks. We compare the structures of these networks, investigating differences in community membership, node centrality, and network connectivity, evidencing that people in lower social positions have a more multidimensional understanding of inequality. Our work contributes to social justice research by proposing an innovative conceptualization of these attitudes and providing evidence of their structural variation across different socioeconomic groups.
... Rational actor theory suggests that individuals benefiting from a system have a material interest in believing it is fair (Kunovich and Slomczynski 2007). Thus, upwardly mobile people believe more strongly in meritocracy (Bucca 2016), winners of a game tend to think it was fair (Molina et al. 2019), and advantaged individuals are more likely to justify inequality as fair when given information about it (Mijs and Hoy 2021;Sands 2017). ...
Work on stratification beliefs expects disadvantaged individuals to believe less strongly in meritocracy because they are more likely to observe structural barriers to opportunity, and because meritocratic ideology runs counter to their self-interest. If they embrace meritocracy, they are understood as victims of a system-justifying ideology. By conceptualising belief formation as a cultural process, I argue that meritocracy belief among the disadvantaged may simply be pragmatic, rather than irrational. I use a narrative identity lens to analyse interviews with forty-one Singaporean youth, arguing that in the absence of other forms of capital, socioeconomically disadvantaged youth draw on narratives of meritocracy and family responsibility to construct agentic selves, telling stories in which they achieve success by relying on the chief resource available to them—themselves. These stories implicitly carry individualistic analyses of inequality, and serve as durable lenses through which disadvantaged youth interpret the successes and failures of those around them. Overall, a narrative lens pushes us to ask what cultural tools are available and useful to individuals in particular settings, and cautions against exporting assumptions about members of a social category beyond the context in which they were developed.
... Similarly, economists Kraay and McKenzie (2014) argue that current poverty can cause future poverty and refer to how economists have traditionally turned to theories of poverty traps to account for persistent poverty. As participants discussed their daily struggles fighting poverty, they never entertain the thought of giving up nor do they retreat from the fight, falling into the trap of 'false hope' (Bucca, 2016;Polivy & Herman, 2000). ...
Resilience is crucial to the survival of the urban poor in Mexico; however, their efforts are often not enough to pull them out of poverty. The present study explores urban poverty and utilises grounded theory to understand the role resilience plays in the social construction of urban poverty in Mexico. Observational research (23 accounts) and individual and group in-depth interviews were conducted with 36 heads of households and other key informants for a total of 115 participants, in 10 neighbourhoods in 3 different regions in Mexico. These neighbourhoods were classified as lower-income by Mexican authorities. Interviews focused on open-ended questions following the themes of income, education, health, nutrition, safety, environment, and resilience. Interview texts were analysed using interpretative thematic analysis and framed by a grounded theory approach. The urban poor in Mexico display the attitudes and behaviours of resilient people, who are unable to achieve social mobility. We found that their resilient actions, which may solve one problem, often create another and can be costly. This leads to individuals being stuck in poverty traps or cycles of poverty, which they cannot escape. The resilience of participants highlights their agency and their attempts to fight poverty; however, it also highlights the structural inequalities in Mexico and the stagnant social mobility, which characterises the country. As an approach based on strengths, ‘resilience’ can be used for understanding and helping the urban poor, while respecting their dignity and agency, but should not take centre stage in either endeavour.
... Even today, inequality in Latin America is increasing every day [111][112][113][114]. Although it should be noted that the gaps related to the increase are greater in Colombia (60%), followed by Paraguay (30%), Peru (20%) and El Salvador (20%) [115], this was not caused by higher income growth among the bottom of the income distribution, but due to negative or no income growth of households in the top decile of the income distribution [110] and an inadequate distribution of regional wealth, an aspect little addressed in the literature [68]. ...
Sustainable development is becoming increasingly important because it improves the quality of our lives. Businesses must focus beyond maximizing corporate economic profits, which are very important. They must internalize the fact that planning and governance-oriented strategies focused on promoting human health and well-being ensure a sustainable future. This study explores the influence exerted by trust in large companies and banks on the perception that technological development has on people’s life satisfaction. The research uses data from the World Value Survey (WVS) and the World Bank, contemplating six Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, in the period between 2012 and 2018. Our main results show that the lower the trust in institutions, the stronger the negative association with perceiving science and technology as making life easier, healthier and more comfortable in the near future. We also confirm that people who have very high levels of national pride tend to trust institutions. We also confirm that people who have very high levels of national pride tend to trust institutions. Finally, with this work, we contribute new empirical evidence to the current field of research on the influence of technological development on issues related to human beings, specifically in Latin America.
... Third, this case study of China also contributes to the emerging debate on the legitimacy and stability of some of the world's most unequal societies (Bucca 2016). China has witnessed a surge of economic inequality, even while remaining remarkably stable, and shows no sign of social turbulence (Whyte 2010, Wu 2009). ...
This study extends recent research on the social determinants of the preferences for distributive disparities. We drew on a recent survey of more than 58,000 participants from 335 large cities in mainland China and measured pay differentials with a vignette experiment about allocating bonuses between two secretaries of different performance levels. Our ordinal regression models adjust for city-level random effects and exploit variation in early-age exposure to the incentives for educational competition across 840 admission district-by-cohort sample groups. Our results show that a higher incentive for long-term educational competition is associated with higher levels of legitimate pay differentials among all groups except the highest-status group, thereby narrowing the status gap. A stronger competitive intensity apparently fosters system justification among the majority lower-status groups but ostensibly does not affect legitimation among the top-status group. This heterogeneity in the effect is (a) unconfounded by personal income rank, provincial gross domestic product, local wealth inequality, and opportunity for college enrollment; and (b) robust to alternative measures of incentives for competition, subdivisions of status groups, nonparametric causal inference, and weighting for sample representativeness.
... The meritocratic framing of inequality is not only a uniquely Chinese framing of inequality, but also can be identified among people in, e.g. the USA (Kluegel and Smith, 1986;Xian and Reynolds, 2017;Mijs, 2021), Latin America (Bucca, 2016) and Europe (Sachweh, 2012;Heuer et al., 2018;Hilmar, 2019;Mijs, 2021). Therefore, viewing differences in wealth and income as consequences of differences in personal merit is not only a Chinese way of framing inequality, but also a way in which people worldwide frame the phenomenon. ...
Economic inequality in China has increased significantly over the past four decades, and I examined the cultural resources that Chinese people have deployed to frame this new inequality. Based on 75 interviews with Chinese people, I identified three framings of inequality: The meritocratic framing views inequality as the result of differences in effort, ability or contribution; the developmental framing emphasizes that because everyone is doing materially better than four decades ago, it does not matter that economic inequality has increased; and what I call the difference-order framing, which emphasizes that individuals are born into different families with different levels of resources; therefore, they cannot be equal, which is not unfair. As such, even though China was a much more economically equal society just a few decades ago, available cultural resources enable Chinese people to frame inequality in ways that justify, rather than problematize, the phenomenon.
... There are significant national-level differences in the ways people evaluate inequality (Gijsberts, 2002;Janmaat, 2013;Kelley and Evans, 1993). Citizens in countries with high levels of inequality often show the lowest level of concern about it (Bucca, 2016;Larsen, 2016). Perceptions of inequality are related to the level of economic development (e.g. ...
Similar levels of inequality may be coded as acceptable or unacceptable in different places. To account for misrecognition of inequality, the existing studies highlight the roles of ideological legitimation and situated comparison through which individuals read inequality around them, but these accounts can be further elaborated upon. This article argues that it is neither the belief in ideology nor social comparison alone but rather the relationship between the two which shapes particular ways in which inequality is experienced. The dominant collective narratives rooted in macro-level contexts and individuals’ situated comparisons shape perceptions of the contradiction (or lack thereof) between how people think things should be and how things are in three specific ways. The proposed framework is put to use with interviews with 98 millennials in Japan and South Korea.
... On the one hand, some writers refer to the paradox finding that the increased degree of economic inequality does not always come with a bigger demand of redistribution of resources. Moreover, the matter of economic inequality does not seem to concern the residents of unequal societies more that it does those of more equal ones (Bucca, 2016. Wietzke, 2016. ...
... On the one hand, some writers refer to the paradox finding that the increased degree of economic inequality does not always come with a bigger demand of redistribution of resources. Moreover, the matter of economic inequality does not seem to concern the residents of unequal societies more that it does those of more equal ones (Bucca, 2016. Wietzke, 2016. ...
... In addition, information about the real level of inequality in society may raise peoples' concerns, but their preferences or demands in terms of policy responses are mostly unaffected (Alesina et al., 2018;Kuziemko et al., 2015). Studies have also shown that Americans tend to underestimate income inequality (Norton & Ariely, 2011;Osberg & Smeeding, 2006) as do people in Latin America (Bucca, 2016;Cruces et al., 2013) and Europe (Kenworthy & McCall, 2008;Loveless & Whitefield, 2011). Ultimately, Gimpelson and Treisman (2018) suggest that "political effects of inequality need to be reframed as theories about effects of perceived inequality" (Gimpleson & Treisman, 2018, 27). ...
A vast literature suggests that income inequality is a crucial precursor for numerous political outcomes. High-level income inequality can have consequences for people's subjective beliefs about their ability to participate in politics effectively, a concept known as political efficacy. In this research, we explore how individuals' perceptions of income inequality are related to their sense of political efficacy. While previous studies on political outcomes of income inequality have focused on objective, country-level inequality indicators, we focus on subjective perception—how individuals' perceptions of distributive fairness are related to political efficacy. Drawing on data from the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS) (2014 ~ 2016), we show that the perception of unfair income distribution negatively affects political efficacy. We posit a mediator in the association, namely the individual’s preference for government's redistributive role, as a linking mechanism between the perception of income inequality and political efficacy. Using the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Bayesian multilevel model, we also present how country-level variation in income inequality exerts a moderating effect on the association. Our findings suggest that political efficacy is partially linked to how people perceive (un)fair income distribution and subsequent expectations of the government's role in redistribution.
... For instance, although Bullock and Waugh (2005) found that low-income field laborers in the United States expected to experience both intergenerational and intragenerational mobility, they more strongly believed in their children's prospects of upward mobility than in their own prospects of mobility. Moreover, whether people think about mobility in intergenerational or intragenerational terms may be consequential because the former better predict attitudes about inequality (Shariff et al., 2016) and the latter better predict attributions of economic success and failure (i.e., whether people make DAVIDAI AND WIENK -3 of 13 dispositional attributions of wealth and poverty; Bucca, 2016). Thus, the time frame that people have in mind is critical for understanding lay beliefs about mobility. ...
Although economic mobility is an objectively defined term, lay beliefs about mobility—the configuration of ideas and attitudes about economic mobility that is not necessarily grounded in economic data—are often formed in a subjective manner. Drawing on research from the United States and beyond, we propose a novel framework for understanding how people construe, think about, and understand economic mobility. We highlight the importance of systematically examining the type, time frame, trajectory, and target of mobility that people have in mind for understanding when they most and least strongly believe in it. In addition, our framework offers a conceptual roadmap for examining the factors that influence lay beliefs about mobility, including individual differences in these lay beliefs and their important downstream consequences. Finally, we outline several important open questions that are highlighted by our framework as a guide for future research on lay beliefs about economic mobility.
... Most existing studies rely on survey data (e.g. Bucca, 2016;Larsen, 2016;Roex et al., 2019); and as Wendy Bottero (2020: 26) recently argued, the surprising patterns of misperceptions repeatedly identified in this research may be 'partly a problem of methodology'. People might be more sophisticated analysts of social processes than surveys are geared to handle (Irwin, 2018). ...
This article reports on the findings from a qualitative, longitudinal study on lay perceptions of opportunity structures among young adults in Denmark. Previous research suggests that people often underestimate the extent of inequality and that rising inequality aggravates misperceptions. Our study deepens the understanding of the multi-layered processes that form meritocratic beliefs, and it identifies key factors at the macro-, meso- and micro-level. A macro-level factor that proved influential was a cultural script revolving around the Danish lay concept, social arv [social inheritance]. At the meso level, the factor of reference groups in socio-economic heterogeneous schools was instrumental for formations of inequality perceptions, but in dissimilar ways depending on micro-level subjective factors. Overall, the participants viewed the free educational system in Denmark as part of a welfare system that equalises opportunity structures in principle, while the majority simultaneously exhibited a nuanced awareness of social forces negating meritocracy in practice.
... Such preferences aren't confined to either laboratories (García-Sánchez et al., 2019;Trump, 2020) or the Global North (Bucca, 2016). Surveys have found people's 'ideal' pay ratios for CEOs to unskilled workers can be as high as 20:1 (in Taiwan), with ratios of around 8:1 in Germany, Australia, the UK and USA (Kiatpongsan & Norton, 2014). ...
Inequality has become a defining feature of our time and concerns are growing that artificial intelligence, human-enhancement and global ecological breakdown could cause levels to spiral upwards. Although public disapproval of current inequalities is widespread, studies also show that people don’t desire equality, but prefer ‘fair’, still significant inequalities. Here, I argue these preferences are rooted in ideals of meritocracy and intuitive notions of free will; values that’ll become increasingly tenuous in a future of human enhancement, where they could legitimise mass inequalities. Maintaining an illusion of free will is often argued to be needed to disincentivise immoral behaviour, but it also creates a vicious feedback: It provides social legitimacy to substantial inequalities, which exacerbate precisely those immoral behaviours that the illusion is intended to mitigate. However, meritocratic values, and their foundational notion of individual agency, are neither natural nor inevitable – they’re mediated by social practices. To see what egalitarian practices may look like, I review the rich anthropology literature on egalitarian societies. This highlights an irony, in that the meritocratic ideals proposed by contemporary politicians as a remedy to entrenched inequalities are the same values seen as the origin of inequality in existing egalitarian societies around the world.
... Este mecanismo permite también abordar regularidades que resultan contraintuitivas desde las perspectivas de la legitimidad social o de la disimulación, principalmente, la sorprendente estabilidad (en perspectiva comparada) de sociedades particularmente desiguales y segregadas (Bucca 2016). ...
El estudio de la legitimación del capitalismo como explicación de su estabilidad ha sido desplazado por estudios sobre las disposiciones individuales hacia la desigualdad y las jerarquías. Recuperando el carácter explicativo de la legitimación, proponemos distinguir analíticamente entre tres grandes mecanismos de legitimación del orden social: legitimidad social, disimulación e inversión ideológica. Estos mecanismos comparten principios clave para la teoría sociológica clásica, pero difieren en la explicación sobre cómo el capitalismo obtiene validez social y se sostiene en el tiempo. Proponemos específicamente la primacía explicativa del mecanismo de inversión ideológica como tesis más plausible para la estabilidad social en las sociedades contemporáneas. A partir de esta tesis, sugerimos una nueva agenda de investigación teórica y empírica sobre la legitimación del orden capitalista.
... 34 The legitimization of income inequality is an aspect of Chilean society that seems to be present in all Latin American region. According to Bucca (2016), even though the region is characterized by high levels of income inequality and very limited levels of social mobility, the majority of the population believes that income inequality is due to individual rather than structural features. ...
This thesis interrogates the experience of respect and disrespect in everyday life from a sociological perspective, with the aim of elucidating the relationship between respect and inequality. It involves a theoretical exploration of the phenomenon of respect as well as an empirical study, which focuses on Chilean society. This study analyses the meanings, practices and narratives associated with, as well as the distribution of, the experience of respect and disrespect in Chile. It involves a mixed method study which includes secondary data analyses together with semi-structured interviews of people of different ages, sex and class in Santiago de Chile. Based on both deductive and inductive criteria, the thesis suggests that respect is the norm, the language and the practice through which we communicate value to others, which is culturally situated and changes historically according to how value is defined in any given context. It claims that there are three main types of respect: categorical, positional and performance and it argues that looking at the tensions between these three types of respect is a fruitful way to read cultural changes regarding the expectations of treatment that are formed in social interactions. Following this approach, the thesis depicts the ‘moral economy of respect’ in Chile, by describing how the participants experience different types of respect. It demonstrates that the experience of respect and disrespect is unequally distributed, but the structure of advantage and disadvantage involved in this experience becomes evident when looking at the process, rather than the outcome, of getting respect. The thesis identifies two main processes of securing respect: earning and commanding respect, both of which demonstrate the importance of agency in the achieving of respect. Finally, the thesis concludes by suggesting that studying respect is productive in the understanding of the experience, consequences and reproduction of inequality.
... The steep increase in economic inequality has raised growing concerns about the effects on political polarization, support for policies designed to promote economic redistribution and economic growth (1)(2)(3)(4)(5), social mobility (6)(7)(8), equality of opportunity (9)(10)(11)(12), and social cohesion (13). Survey research has shown that economic inequality is deemed unacceptable when it is perceived as the outcome of an uneven playing field (9,12,14,15). ...
Growing disparities of income and wealth have prompted extensive survey research to measure the effects on public beliefs about the causes and fairness of economic inequality. However, observational data confound responses to unequal outcomes with highly correlated inequality of opportunity. This study uses a novel experiment to disentangle the effects of unequal outcomes and unequal opportunities on cognitive, normative, and affective responses. Participants were randomly assigned to positions with unequal opportunities for success. Results showed that both winners and losers were less likely to view the outcomes as fair or attributable to skill as the level of redistribution increased, but this effect of redistribution was stronger for winners. Moreover, winners were generally more likely to believe that the game was fair, even when the playing field was most heavily tilted in their favor. In short, it’s not just how the game is played, it’s also whether you win or lose.
... Bourdieu generó una renovación teórica importante (1979,2000), al definir las clases sociales no sólo a partir del capital económico, sino considerando un capital total que incluye también el capital cultural y social. 1 Empíricamente, la escala de clases sociales EGP -por las iniciales de sus autores (Erikson y Goldthorpe, 1993) -predomina hoy internacionalmente en la investigación sobre estratificación social, y utilizadatos sobre ocupación de las clases sociales basada en grupos ocupacionales. Se ha observado que esa estratificación tiene un menor efecto en las percepciones sobre las desigualdades sociales en América Latina que otras condiciones socioeconómicas, como la educación y la experiencia de movilidad social (Bucca, 2016). El diverso enfoque de las perspectivas teórico-conceptuales, así como la competencia entre indicadores, ilustra dificultades vinculadas a definir qué características socioeconómicas deben ser comparadas con la posición social subjetiva. ...
Investigaciones empíricas en diversos países muestran que una parte importante de la población se identifica subjetivamente con las clases medias. A partir de una clasificación de las personas en la sociedad elaborada por los propios individuos, analizamos de qué modo ellos se identifican con una posición social. Nuestro análisis se basa en una encuesta en que se solicitó a los participantes realizar un juego de clasificación de viñetas representativas de personas en la sociedad chilena. La encuesta fue aplicada en Chile en el año 2016 a una muestra de 2.000 individuos estadísticamente representativos de la población. Los resultados muestran los criterios que predominan al clasificar a las personas en la sociedad y qué influye en la definición de su posición social por parte de los individuos, quienes se autoidentifican mayoritariamente con una categoría baja en la sociedad.
... These findings may also help inform an ongoing debate regarding the relationship between inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunity. Whereas some researchers have argued that concerns about inequality and concerns about meritocracy go hand-in-hand (Bucca, 2016;McCall, 2013;Newman, Johnston, & Lown, 2015;Wright, 2018) and that the majority of Americans prefer policies that both reduce economic inequality and increase economic mobility (McCall, 2016), others have suggested that people living in highly unequal areas are more likely to believe in meritocracy (Solt, Hu, Hudson, Song, & Yu, 2016). Recently, McCall et al. (2017) published experimental evidence suggesting that economic inequality reduces the belief in meritocracy. ...
Although the rates of economic inequality in the United States are at their highest since the onset of The Great Depression, many Americans do not seem as concerned as may be expected. This apparent lack of concern has been attributed to people's deeply-entrenched belief in economic mobility – the belief that through hard work, determination, and skill people are able to rise up the economic ladder. Little is known, however, about why Americans so strongly believe in economic mobility. In five studies (N = 3112, including two pre-registered studies, one with a large, income-stratified sample), I examine the relationship between economic inequality and the belief in economic mobility. I find that people (accurately) perceive a negative relationship between economic inequality and economic mobility, and that this is due to the attributions they make about wealth and poverty. As economic inequality rises, people increasingly attribute economic success and failure to external factors that are beyond a person's control (vs. internal dispositions), and therefore expect economic mobility to drop. As a consequence, people's tendency to underestimate economic inequality reinforces their belief in economic mobility. I discuss how these findings contribute to our understanding of lay beliefs about the economic system and public opinion regarding inequality.
El objetivo de este artículo es explorar la relación entre aversión a la inequidad, distribución de recursos y sesgo intragrupal en escolares desde una perspectiva del desarrollo y establecer la relación entre variables socioeducativas y la respuesta aversiva. Participaron 302 personas entre los 11 y los 23 años (M = 16.45, DE = 2.95); se propuso una tarea que evaluaba la acepción o rechazo de distribuciones de recursos condicionadas por la presencia o ausencia de sesgo intragrupal. En los resultados se evidencia que el sesgo intragrupal genera diferencias significativas cuando las personas distribuyen recursos; existe una correlación negativa entre la aversión a la inequidad ventajosa y el número de monedas ofrecidas. Se prefiere mantener sus ganancias que tener que distribuirlos ante situaciones de inequidad. Este patrón sugiere que las relaciones interpersonales influyen en la distribución de recursos y reflejan un comportamiento adaptativo que busca mantener la cooperación y el orden dentro del grupo. Se halló una relación entre el estrato socioeconómico y una baja aversión a la inequidad desventajosa en presencia de la condición de sesgo intrasocial. Como conclusión se propone que el sesgo intragrupal influye en la distribución de recursos, a nivel social, el no cuestionarse si una distribución de recursos es justa o no, conlleva al mantenimiento de inequidad y desigualdad. El hecho de que las personas estén dispuestas a aceptar cualquier resultado con tal de obtener una ganancia implica que no existe un pensamiento crítico frente a la justicia.
The promise that people can get ahead and succeed if they are willing to try hard represents a central pillar of the moral order of capitalist market societies. Lately, sociological diagnoses of the times have suggested the erosion of the principle of effort and hard work for getting ahead. Against this backdrop, we analyze whether beliefs in the foundations of success have changed in German society over the period 1976–2014. We do not find that the belief in the idea that economic mobility is possible for those willing to put in the effort has eroded. Over the last decades, however, the belief that people are successful because of their family of origins has increased. Such a belief has grown among all social classes but witnessed the largest increases among the upper class and the upper middle classes. Overall, the findings question the claim that belief in meritocracy is most widespread among the middle classes, since such a belief is only more virulent among the self-employed as compared to other classes. Yet, the increasing belief among upper and middle classes that success depends on social origin may hint at irritations in specific fractions of society.
Research has produced mixed results on the relationship between economic inequality and social and political trust. These studies overrepresent developed countries, cross-sectional designs, and overlook the role of subjective evaluations of inequality. We use 13 waves from 18 Latin American countries over 23 years (above 250,000 participants) to examine the association between structural inequality and fairness evaluations with political and social trust. Multilevel regression analyses for comparative longitudinal surveys suggest that within-country changes in economic inequality over time are negatively associated with political and social trust. However, between-country inequality was negatively related to social trust but not political trust. In addition, fairness evaluations of inequality were positively related to social and political trust. Exploratory analyses revealed that fairness evaluations mediated the negative association between economic inequality and political and social trust. We discussed that fairness evaluations of inequality may explain why inequality affects social and political trust.
Seit Jahrzehnten dokumentieren Umfragen die Beunruhigung der österreichischen Bevölkerung über (wachsensende) soziale Ungleichheit. Maßnahmen zur Ungleichheitsreduktion scheinen dennoch weitgehend gesellschaftlich umstritten. Dieser Beitrag untersucht mittels Fokusgruppen unterschiedliche Assoziationen von Respondent:innen bei gebräuchlichen Fragen zu Einkommensungleichheit in Surveys. Die qualitative Auswertung zeigt die Vielfalt an Deutungen und hinterfragt folglich die Konstruktvalidität klassischer Survey-Items. Konsens herrschte in den Fokusgruppen über die wichtige Rolle genderspezifischer Einkommensungleichheiten und die Dominanz des Leistungsprinzips, dessen Definition selbst allerdings hart umkämpft ist. Zudem artikulieren Teilnehmer:innen Ohnmachtsgefühle hinsichtlich der Umsetzbarkeit von Maßnahmen zur Ungleichheitsreduktion, die etwa auf Staats- und Elitenskepsis zurückzuführen sind. Schließlich zeigt die Studie Fluidität von Ungleichheitseinstellungen, die sich beispielsweise in inkonsistentem Antwortverhalten in den Fokusgruppen äußert, sowie ein Phänomen, das als „Reden über andere“ bezeichnet werden kann.
In three studies, we investigated the impact of economic inequality on beliefs about meritocracy and potential mechanisms among the Chinese. Study 1 ('N' = 19,641) longitudinally substantiated that beliefs about meritocracy abate in tandem with the increasing inequality perception but not objective economic inequality (Gini coefficient). Studies 2a ('N' = 140) and 2b ('N' = 269) experimentally showed that inequality perception decreases belief in meritocracy. The lower classes were less willing to believe in meritocracy than the upper classes when exposed to inequality cues (Studies 1 and 2b). In Study 3 ('N' = 218), we again manipulated the level of economic inequality and found that laypeople construing distribution as unfair mediated the relationship between inequality perception and meritocratic belief. We highlighted that people’s interpretation of economic inequality might influence their beliefs about merit.
Las atribuciones causales de la pobreza son las razones subjetivas de por qué la gente piensa que hay pobreza. Es importante estudiarlas porque permiten comprender la reproducción y legitimación de las desigualdades en la medida en que fundamentan actitudes y respuestas ante la pobreza, como la aceptación o rechazo de implementación de políticas redistributivas o las representaciones sobre el merecimiento y la culpa de los resultados socioeconómicos de los individuos (Jaramillo-Molina, 2019). Considerando la persistencia de los altos porcentajes de población religiosa en México y que las creencias religiosas conforman un marco valorativo importante en la configuración de las cosmovisiones de las personas (Zalpa & Offerdal, 2008), la presente investigación pretende explorar las relaciones entre creencias religiosas y atribuciones causales de la pobreza a través de un análisis de regresión logística. Los resultados señalan que determinadas creencias como el providencialismo o el tradicionalismo tienen diferentes efectos sobre las atribuciones causales de la pobreza. Esto complejiza la comprensión de la relación entre pobreza, desigualdad y religión, al mismo tiempo que da luz para fomentar la reflexión sobre la participación e integración de los creyentes en la lucha por el abatimiento de la pobreza y las desigualdades.
Economic outcomes reflect an intricate mixture of people’s internal dispositions and external circumstances that are beyond their control. How, then, do people make sense of wealth and poverty? I suggest that attributions of economic outcomes are susceptible to various influences that can be grouped into two broad categories—who people are (i.e., personal influences) and what people see in the world (i.e., societal influences). Personal influences include people’s ideological leanings and worldviews, socioeconomic standing, and experiences of economic success or failure. Societal influences include macroeconomic circumstances, cultural narratives, structural prejudices, and salient consumption behaviors by the rich and the poor. I discuss how these influences shape (and distort) attributions of economic outcomes and lay beliefs about wealth and poverty.
This book investigates why people are willing to support an institutional arrangement that realises large-scale redistribution of wealth between social groups of society. Steffen Mau introduces the concept of 'the moral economy' to show that acceptance of welfare exchanges rests on moral assumptions and ideas of social justice people adhere to. Analysing both the institution of welfare and the public attitudes towards such schemes, the book demonstrates that people are neither selfish nor altruistic; rather they tend to reason reciprocally.
Using survey data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and national-level statistics from various official sources, we explore how attitudes toward economic inequality are shaped by economic conditions across 24 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Consistent with the economic self-interest thesis, we find that where income inequality is low, those in lower economic positions tend to be less likely than those in higher economic positions to favor it being increased. On the other hand, where economic resources are highly unequally distributed, the adverse effects of inequality climb the class ladder, resulting in the middle classes being just as likely as the working class to favor a reduction in inequality. Our results further suggest that people tend to see current levels of inequality as legitimate, regardless of their own economic position, but nonetheless desire economic change—i.e., they would like to see inequality reduced—if they perceive it could improve their own economic situation.
Existing research analyzes the effects of cross-national and temporal variation in income inequality on public opinion; however, research has failed to explore the impact of variation in inequality across citizens’ local residential context. This article analyzes the impact of local inequality on citizens’ belief in a core facet of the American ethos—meritocracy. We advance conditional effects hypotheses that collectively argue that the effect of residing in a high-inequality context will be moderated by individual income. Utilizing national survey data, we demonstrate that residing in more unequal counties heightens rejection of meritocracy among low-income residents and bolsters adherence among high-income residents. In relatively equal counties, we find no significant differences between high- and low-income citizens. We conclude by discussing the implications of class-based polarization found in response to local inequality with respect to current debates over the consequences of income inequality for American democracy.
This article asks how ordinary people in Germany perceive and legitimize economic disparities in an era of rising income inequality. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents from higher and lower social classes, the paper reconstructs the ‘moral economy’ that underlies popular views of inequality. While respondents agree with abstract inegalitarian principles—i.e. income differentiation based on merit—they are concerned with specific instances of inequality, especially poverty and wealth. These are criticized because they are seen to imply intolerable deviations, both upwards and downwards, from a way of living presumed as universal, thereby fostering a segregation of life-worlds and social disintegration. Thus, perceptions of injustice do not seem to be based on the existence of income inequality as such, but rather on the view that economic disparities threaten the social bond.
Welfare regimes differ in their impact on social inequality in important ways. While previous research has explored the shape of stratification across nations and citizens’ normative attitudes towards inequality, scant attention has been given to citizens’ perceptions of actual stratification across welfare regimes. Using the 1999 International Social Survey Programme, we compare perceptions of inequality in Germany, Sweden, and the United States. More specifically, we ask how the stratification reality in each country is assessed by its citizens, whether it meets their stratification aspirations, and whether these perceptions differ systematically both across and within welfare regimes. Our results show that perceptions vary in a clear and meaningful way across countries as well as between different social groups within a given welfare regime. For instance, Americans are more likely to view society as unequal, but only slightly more likely to prefer that extent of inequality. Conversely, the Swedish clearly view their society as more equal than citizens in the United States and Germany, yet not nearly as equal as they would like it to be. Our multivariate results reveal important similarities and differences as well, such as socio-economic cleavages in the United States, and cleavages between labour market insiders and outsiders in Germany.
Two decades ago, scholars predicted that the economic and political transformations underway in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe would be accompanied by fundamental shifts in societal values and norms. Unlike political reforms, changes in societal norms were believed to take place gradually, as individuals became increasingly socialized by new institutions and conditions. In this article, we analyze change in a core set of societal norms—beliefs in distributive justice—in the Czech Republic over the last two decades, and locate those trends in regional perspective. What we find is that, over time, the negative association between egalitarian and meritocratic norms has increasingly strengthened, suggesting a crystallization of those norms as opposing value sets. In addition, attachments to those norms are increasingly structured by respondents’ socio-economic status. In order words, the research confirms that subjective norms in the Czech Republic are increasingly shaped by objective social status in ways common in advanced democracies, and that we can speak not only of a crystallization of the value system, but of a corresponding “re-stratification” of justice beliefs in relation to social position.
Utilizing International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data, we explore the relationship between economic inequality—both at the individual-level and the national-level—and attitudes toward income inequality in 20 capitalist societies. Our findings suggest that experience of economic inequality has an enduring effect on attitudes. Specifically, respondents’ own social class and their father’s social class are both significantly related to attitudes, with working class individuals tending to be more egalitarian in their views than others. Still, our findings also suggest that attitudes are unrelated to experience of social mobility per se. Tests for random effects of class origin and destination further demonstrate that class has a similar effect across societies. In terms of contextual influences, we demonstrate that as income inequality rises, people of all classes tend to have less egalitarian views. In contrast to suggestions of previous research, however, we find no evidence that economic development or equality of opportunity influence public opinion on what is considered fair income differences.
Do African Americans, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites differ in their explanations of the socioeconomic divide separating blacks and whites in the United States? Have such explanations changed over time? To answer these questions, I use data from the 1977 to 2004 General Social Surveys (GSS) to map race/ethnic differences in support for, trends in, and the determinants of seven “modes of explanation” for blacks' disadvantage. Trends over time indicate the continuation of a long-standing decline in non-Hispanic whites' use of an ability-based (innate inferiority) explanation. Non- Hispanic whites' beliefs in a purely motivational and a purely educational explanation are increasing, however, along with the view that none of the explanations offered in the GSS explain blacks' disadvantage. African Americans and Hispanics also evidence increases in a purely motivational explanation, but they differ from non-Hispanic whites in demonstrating clear declines in structural beliefs—especially the perception that discrimination explains blacks' lower socioeconomic status. These conservative shifts in blacks' and Hispanics' beliefs result in greater similarity with non-Hispanic whites over time. Notably, however, significant “static” race/ethnic group differences remain: non- Hispanic whites score highest, and blacks lowest, on a purely motivational explanation, while African Americans are more likely than both non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics to endorse a discrimination-based explanation. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for racial policy support.
Economic inequality is usually assumed to be a threat to social cohesion and democracy. Nevertheless, this opposition of inequality and democracy is based on further assumptions such as (a) that people perceive economic inequality accurately, and (b) that, by and large they consider inequality unjust. Research into distributive issues has not found consistent support for neither of these assumptions. Quite the contrary, empirical evidence indicates that economic inequality is widely misperceived and that inequality is to some extent considered legitimate. So far most of the empirical evidence in the area of legitimacy comes from experimental studies in the developed world. The present research aims at widening the scope of legitimacy studies by focusing on Chile as a case country, one of the societies with the highest economic inequality worldwide, guided by the question to what extent is economic inequality considered legitimate in a context of high economic inequality? In addressing this question, and based on previous evidence, the article proposes a way to evaluate (a) the legitimacy of inequality at a country level via survey research, and (b) the role of inequality perception and justice ideologies in the justification of economic inequality. The data to be analyzed is the public opinion survey International Social Justice Project (ISJP), implemented in Chile in the year 2007 (n = 890). Multivariate analysis results reveal signs of legitimacy of inequality in Chile, opening a series of issues regarding the acceptance and stability of unequal distributions.
This paper explores popular explanations of poverty. Based on existing theoretical and empirical studies, four types of reason for poverty are distinguished: (1) individual blame; (2) individual fate; (3) social blame; and (4) social fate. Data from the 1990 European Values Study surveys are used to describe and compare cross-nationally the proportions of people perceiving each of the four explanations as a main reason for people living in poverty. Further, it is explored whether or not differential patterns in these perceptions are related to types of welfare regime as distinguished by several authors. One of the main conclusions is that, contrary to prior evidence from Anglo-Saxon countries only, social blame is the most popular explanation of poverty in nearly all of the twenty countries studied. That is, the majority of people living in industrialized welfare states believe that poverty is the outcome of actions of social actors, rather than the inevitable result of individual or social fate. The idea that the poor are themselves to blame for their situation is on average more popular in Eastern European than in Western European countries, where the idea lost ground from the mid-1970s onwards. There is no relation between popular perceptions of poverty and type of welfare state regime. It is suggested that future research should narrow the focus on the relation between poverty perceptions and types of anti-poverty strategy.
Various authors point to the connection between public perceptions of poverty and institutionalised strategies of dealing with the poor. The way the general public perceives the poor, and especially the causes of poverty, is generally assumed to have a profound influence on the legitimacy of anti-poverty policies. Yet studies on popular perceptions of and attributions for poverty are relatively infrequent. Moreover, a considerable share of existing research appears conceptually and/or methodologically inadequate. This article provides a critical review of existing literature that is interwoven into the discussion of the two most common approaches to studying lay poverty attributions: the factor analytical approach and the forced-choice-question approach. With respect to the latter, we present an empirical analysis and interpretation of the four response categories that constitute the core of the forced-choice question included in Eurobarometer.
Since the end of the 1980s considerable change has overtaken Eastern Europe. State-socialist regimes collapsed and turned into parliamentary democracies, while centrally planned economies were transformed into free-market economies. These processes were accompanied by an increase in levels of social inequality. Did people in state-socialist societies before the transformation prefer a more equal income distribution than people in market societies, and did they change their opinions as a result of the profound changes they experienced? How and why do individuals differ in their opinions on these matters? What are the consequences of these attitudes towards inequality for people's judgments of the legitimacy of both the new free-market order and the former state-socialist regime? And, to what extent do peoples' attitudes towards inequality determine their voting behavior? These and other questions are answered in this book by means of large-scale survey data from a large number of countries at different points in time, spanning a time period of 10 years, from 1987 to 1996. The book focuses on people's attitudes towards income inequality, and their consequences, in the state-socialist societies that underwent this dramatic system change, and compares these to established democratic market societies
This book examines the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the social and economic context of poverty and economic crisis in developing and transition countries. It challenges the assumption — implicit in AIDS policy — that differences in sexual behavior are adequate to explain differences in HIV prevalence between populations. Using an epidemiological approach, the book shows how people who are malnourished, burdened with parasites and infectious diseases, and who lack access to medical care are more vulnerable to all diseases. It explains the specific mechanisms by which undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, malaria, soil-transmitted helminths, schistosomiasis, and other parasitic illnesses increase the risk of HIV transmission and epidemic spread of HIV/AIDS in poor populations. A theme throughout the book is that the sexual transmission of HIV diverts attention from the social and economic context of profound poverty. The distraction of sex is compounded by Western stereotypes of African sexuality, perpetuated through reliance on anecdotal evidence and the construction of a notion of fundamental dissimilarity among peoples of different world regions. The book evaluates current methods in epidemiology and health economics, which do not take account of the interactions among diseases that increase risk of transmission of HIV in poor populations. It criticizes HIV-prevention policies as narrow, shortsighted, and dead-end because they fail to address the economic and social context in which risky behaviors occur. Finally, the book offers pragmatic solutions to social, economic, and biological factors that promote disease transmission, including the spread of HIV.
It is widely assumed that Americans care little about income inequality, believe opportunities abound, admire the rich, and dislike redistributive policies. Leslie McCall contends that such assumptions are based on both incomplete survey data and economic conditions of the past and not present. in fact, Americans have desired less inequality for decades, and McCall’s book explains why. Americans become most concerned about inequality in times of inequitable growth, when they view the rich as prospering while opportunities for good jobs, fair pay, and high quality education are restricted for everyone else. As a result, they favor policies to expand opportunity and redistribute earnings in the workplace, reducing inequality in the market rather than redistributing income after the fact with tax and spending policies. This book resolves the paradox of how Americans can express little enthusiasm for welfare state policies and still yearn for a more equitable society and forwards a new model of preferences about income inequality rooted in labor market opportunities rather than welfare state policies.
Using data from the World Values Survey and national-level indicators for 24 modern democracies, we assess the influence of social class and economic inequality on preferences for government responsibility. We improve on previous research by using multilevel models that account for differences in attitudes both within (i.e., over time) and across countries. Our findings are consistent with the economic self-interest hypothesis. Specifically, working class individuals, who tend to gain the most from government intervention because of their low and often more precarious economic position, are more likely than others to support government intervention. We also find a positive relationship between national-level income inequality and support for government intervention. As income inequality rises, its social ills tend to be more pervasive, resulting in public opinion becoming more supportive of governments taking responsibility for their citizens. We further demonstrate that inequality moderates the relationship between social class and attitudes. Although the effect of income inequality is positive for all social classes, attitudes across social classes become more similar as inequality rises. © 2015 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.
Attitudes to inequality are compared in Sweden and Britain, using evidence from the International Social Survey Program. Using a more multidimensional model and more representative samples than before, the article starts out from various arguments about greater egalitarianism in Sweden compared to Britain and assesses the arguments in the light of empirical evidence.
It is concluded (a) that there are no signs of any strong ‘leftism’ in the Swedish population compared to the British one (b) that attitudes to inequality are multidimensional and tend to fall into two broad perspectives, one emphasizing redistribution and one focusing on incentives (c) that in Sweden, attitudes were mostly structured by class and ‘class-related’ variables, such as income and education, while agegroup differences were surprisingly large in Britain. Sector and gender cleavages seem to be of minor importance. The implications of the findings in relation to various perspectives are discussed.
Academic research on social mobility from the 1960s until now has made several facts clear. First, and most important, it is better to ask how the conditions and circumstances of early life constrain adult success than to ask who is moving up and who is not. The focus on origins keeps the substantive issues of opportunity and fairness in focus, while the mobility question leads to confusing side issues. Second, mobility is intrinsically symmetrical; each upward move is offset by a downward move in the absence of growth, expansion, or immigration. Third, social origins are not a single dimension of inequality that can be paired with the outcome of interest (without significant excluded variable bias); they are a comprehensive set of conditions describing the circumstances of youth. Fourth, the constraints of social origins vary by time, place, and subpopulation. These four “knowns” should inform any attempt to collect new data on mobility.
Prompted by new data and a renewed concern about equality of opportunity, the study of intergenerational mobility has flourished in Latin America in the past decade. Although analysis is still restricted to a handful of countries, one conclusion appears clear: Intergenerational income mobility is weaker in Latin America than in industrial countries and is characterized by "persistence at the top," a pattern consistent with the high levels of economic concentration in the region. However, social class mobility in Latin America does not differ from that in the industrialized world. This essay reviews two generations of mobility research since the 1960s, takes stock of current findings on economic and class mobility in Latin America, examines the linkages between mobility and macro-level factors, and engages a new literature on equality of opportunity. I suggest that the comparative understanding of mobility in Latin America can inform and inspire research in the industrialized world.
Comparative research on racial classification has often turned to Latin America, where race is thought to be particularly fluid. Using nationally representative data from the 2010 and 2012 America's Barometer survey, the authors examine patterns of self-identification in four countries. National differences in the relation between skin color, socioeconomic status, and race were found. Skin color predicts race closely in Panama but loosely in the Dominican Republic. Moreover, despite the dominant belief that money whitens, the authors discover that status polarizes (Brazil), mestizoizes (Colombia), darkens (Dominican Republic), or has no effect (Panama). The results show that race is both physical and cultural, with country variations in racial schema that reflect specific historical and political trajectories.
In an exploratory study of matched samples in England and the United States, we construct a path model that explains 26% and 39%, respectively, of the variance in social judgments about the fairness or unfairness of equality. The underdog principle, from which we predict that egalitarians compared to inegalitarians are more likely to be nonwhite, to have low prestige occupations, to have low family incomes, and to identify with the lower and working classes, is accepted. The principle of enlightenment, from which we predict a positive relationship between education and favorable attitudes toward equality, is accepted for England but not for the United States. The principle of an egalitarian Zeitgeist, from which we predict younger people are more egalitarian than older people, is accepted for the United States but not for England. Two additional important causal variables are found. First, a sense of personal equity, that is, a belief that a person has the standard of living that he/she deserves, reduces egalitarian attitudes in England more than in the United States and may reflect a cultural belief that British society is extraordinarily just because social arrangements result from fair rules of the game. While it is of no importance in England, the cultural belief in monetary success reduces egalitarian attitudes in the United States and functions as the belief in the just society does in England.
Scholars argue that Latin American ideologies of mestizaje, or racial mixing, mask ethnoracial discrimination. We examine popular explanations for indigenous or Afrodescendant disadvantage in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru using the 2010 AmericasBarometer survey. Findings show that numerical majorities across all countries endorse structural-disadvantage explanations and reject victim-blaming stances; in seven of eight countries, they specifically recognize discrimination against ethnoracial minorities. Brazilians most point to structural causes, while Bolivians are least likely to recognize discrimination. While educational status differences tend to be sizable, dominant and minority explanations are similar. Both are comparable to African-American views and contrast with those of U.S. whites.
In a sample of southern Californians, three questions were investigated: (1) Are there race/ethnic differences in beliefs
about the causes of poverty? (2) Do two social psychological variables, namely internal and external self-explanations, significantly
affect beliefs about poverty net of respondents' background characteristics? and (3) Do the determinants of beliefs about
poverty differ for blacks, Latinos, and whites? Results indicate that in each case the answer is yes. First, blacks and Latinos
are more likely than whites to view both individualistic and structuralist explanations for poverty as important Second, respondents'
self-explanations have significant effects on poverty beliefs. Lastly, the patterns of effects of several variables that predict
beliefs about poverty differ across race/ethnic groups. Results confirm, contradict, and extend current knowledge of beliefs
about poverty.
En este artículo se propone un marco analítico para el estudio de las clases sociales en América Latina, presentando datos sobre su composición y evolución en los últimos veinte años, que se corresponden con dos decenios de aplicación de un nuevo modelo económico en la mayoría de los países de la región. Asimismo, este estudio actualiza uno anterior sobre el mismo tema publicado por el autor a fines del período de industrialización por sustitución de importaciones. Confrontada con dicha etapa, la época actual se caracteriza por un notable incremento en la desigualdad del ingreso, la concentración persistente de la riqueza en el decil superior de la población, la rápida expansión de la clase de microempresarios y el estancamiento o aumento del proletariado del sector informal. La contracción del empleo en el sector público y la prácticamente nula demanda de trabajadores en el sector formal de la mayoría de los países se han traducido en una serie de reajustes en las clases medias y bajas. El aumento de los cuenta propia en el sector informal y de los microempresarios en toda la región puede ser interpretado como una consecuencia directa de las nuevas políticas de ajuste. Se exploran asimismo otras estrategias de adaptación menos ortodoxas, que incluyen también el auge de la violencia criminal en las ciudades y el proceso de emigración por parte de una población cada vez más diversificada en distintos sectores. Por último, se describe el impacto que los cambios en la estratificación social han tenido sobre los partidos políticos y otras formas de movilización política popular en América Latina. /// This article proposes a framework for the analysis of social classes in Latin America and presents evidence on the composition of the class structure in the region and its evolution during the last two decades, corresponding to the years of implementation of a new economic model in most countries. The paper is an update of an earlier article on the same topic published in this journal at the end of the period of import substitution industrialization. Relative to that earlier period, the present era registers a visible increase in income inequality, a persistent concentration of wealth in the top decile of the population, a rapid expansion of the class of microentrepreneurs, and a stagnation or increase of the informal proletariat. The contraction of public sector employment and the stagnation of formal sector labor demand in most countries has led to a series of adaptive solutions by the middle and lower classes. The rise of informal self-employment and micro-entrepreneurialism throughout the region can be interpreted as a direct result of the new adjustment policies. We explore other, less orthodox adaptive strategies, including the rise of violent crime in the cities and migration abroad by an increasingly diversified cross-section of the population. The impact that changes in the class structure have had an party politics and other forms of popular political mobilization in Latin American countries is discussed.
This paper presents a description and explanation of the current character of whites' beliefs about blacks' opportunity: perceptions of equality of opportunity, discrimination, "reverse discrimination," and the over-time trend in black opportunity. Data from a recent national survey show that whites tend to perceive widespread reverse discrimination, to see blacks' opportunity as having greatly improved in recent years, and in general to deny structural limits to blacks' opportunity. We propose that these perceptions are, in part, the product of the prevailing beliefs about stratification held by the American public. Empirical analysis shows that whites' beliefs about blacks' opportunity are significantly influenced by persons' perceptions of their own opportunity, by stratification ideology explaining opportunity in general, and by feelings of relative deprivation.
This paper will present the preliminary results of a research on the Chilean middle class and its perception of the socioeconomic elite. The global emergence of the middle class (Banerjee & Duflo 2007, Ravallion 2009, Birdsall 2010, Kharas 2011, Franco et al. 2011, Dobbs et al. 2012, Ferreira et al. 2012, López & Ortiz 2012, Oliveira 2012, Chunling 2012) has created a renewed interest towards “new” middle classes in global sociology due to its rapid growth and the socio-political challenges that this poses. How do those who belong to the middle classes in emergent countries feel and think in everyday life about one of the more salient expressions of world inequalities, the socioeconomic elite – i.e. “the 1%”? Does a perception of injustice, discontent or critique emerge towards the elite? How does that happen – or not?
Our team conducted a study using an experimental methodology based on games that replicate similar exercises applied by social scientists through studies in different countries: “unknown persons” and “dictator” games. Starting with a middle-class differentiation through occupation and distinguishing by type of territory where they live and work, the simulation was located in three cities of different sizes in Chile. In each city, six simulation games were conducted with participants from five strata of Chilean middle classes and one from non-qualified manual workers. This method allows the study of feelings and perceptions that arise in simulated situations of social interaction, which could not be observed through surveys or interviews.
We will present the preliminary results, especially subjective elements that nourish and give meaning to middle classes, reproducing or challenging inequalities. The paper will contribute on topics that are relevant to stratification in the context of globalization, such as different discourses in middle classes, their feelings, perceptions of justice/injustice, discontent and critique towards the socioeconomic elite.
We identify a group of people in Latin America that are not poor but not middle class either—namely “strugglers” in households with daily income per capita between 10 (at constant 2005 PPP). This group will account for about a third of the region’s population over the next decades; as the size and income of the middle class rises, they could become increasingly marginalized. The cash transfers they receive are largely offset by indirect taxes; the benefit of schooling and other in-kind transfers they receive is questionable after adjusting for quality. We discuss implications for the social contract.
Group dominance perspectives contend that ideologies are central to the production and reproduction of racial oppression by their negative affect on attitudes toward antiracism initiatives. The Brazilian myth of racial democracy frequently is framed in this light, evoked as a racist ideology to explain an apparent lack of confrontation of racial inequality. Data from a 2000 probability sample of racial attitudes in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contradict this long-held assertion, showing that most Brazilians in this state recognize racism as playing a role in Brazilian society, support the idea of affirmative action, and express interest in belonging to antiracism organizations. Moreover, opinions on affirmative action appear more strongly correlated with social class, as measured by education level, than race. As compared with results from the United States regarding opinions on similar selected affirmative action policies, the racial gap in Brazilian support for affirmative action is only moderate. Results also show that those who recognize the existence of racial discrimination in Brazil are more likely to support affirmative action. Implications for race theorizing from a group dominance perspective in Brazil as well as for antiracism strategies are addressed.
A major finding in comparative mobility research is the high similarity across countries and the lack of association between mobility and other national attributes, with one exception: higher inequality seems to be associated with lower mobility. Evidence for the mobility-inequality link is, however, inconclusive, largely because most mobility studies have been conducted in advanced countries with relatively similar levels of inequality. This article introduces Chile to the comparative project. As the 10th most unequal country in the world, Chile is an adjudicative case. If high inequality results in lower mobility, Chile should be significantly more rigid than its industrialized peers. This hypothesis is disproved by the analysis. Despite vast economic inequality, Chile is as fluid, if not more so, than the much more equal industrialized nations. Furthermore, there is no evidence of a decline in mobility as the result of the increase in inequality during the market-oriented transformation of the country in the 1970s and 1980s. Study of the specific mobility flows in Chile indicates a significant barrier to long-range downward mobility from the elite (signaling high “elite closure”), but very low barriers across nonelite classes. This particular mobility regime is explained by the pattern, not the level, of Chilean inequality-high concentration in the top income decile, but significantly less inequality across the rest of the class structure. The high Chilean mobility is, however, largely inconsequential, because it takes place among classes that share similar positions in the social hierarchy of resources and rewards. The article concludes by redefining the link between inequality and mobility.
Latin America is often used as a backdrop against which U.S. race relations are compared. Yet research on race in Latin America focuses almost exclusively on countries in the region with a large recognized presence of individuals of African descent such as Brazil. Racial categories in these countries are based on skin color distinctions along a black-white continuum. By contrast, the main socially recognized ethnic distinction in Indo-Latin American countries such as Mexico, between indigenous and non-indigenous residents, is not based primarily on phenotypical differences, but rather on cultural practices and language use. Many Mexicans today nevertheless express a preference for whiter skin and European features, even though no clear system of skin color categorization appears to exist. In this study, I use data from a nationally-representative panel survey of Mexican adults to examine the extent of skin-color-based social stratification in contemporary Mexico. Despite extreme ambiguity in skin color classification, I find considerable agreement among survey interviewers about who belongs to three skin color categories. The results also provide evidence of profound social stratification by skin color. Individuals with darker skin tone have significantly lower levels of educational attainment and occupational status, and they are more likely to live in poverty and less likely to be affluent, even after controlling for other individual characteristics.
Although evaluation of income inequality has been the subject of many studies, there are questions that remain to be answered. In regard to the structural position thesis, the reflection thesis and dominant ideology thesis, this article examines how much income inequality people will accept before deciding that the disparity is too large and how societal differences can be explained adequately. For this purpose, the attitudes of about 35,000 respondents in 30 countries are investigated. A multi-level analysis is carried out using data from the ISSP survey ‘Social Inequality III’ of 1999. At the societal level, both socio-economic and cultural characteristics are considered. While much research places emphasis on dominant ideologies, this analysis in addition attempts to grasp these ideologies by aggregating individual beliefs. It is shown that societal differences are well explained by ideologies, but that socio-economic characteristics are important as well. At the micro-level, several individual characteristics are considered. Among other things, people at the top of the vertical axis are less critical than those at the bottom. There are also substantial differences between societies in regard to how much inequality in income ratio will be accepted. Thus, people not only accept different amounts of income, they even have different preferences about which ratio is just.
Beliefs have the potential to obscure and legitimate, or to challenge, inequalities of gender and race. Through an analysis of the association between education and beliefs about racial and gender inequality, this article explores for whom education is most likely to foster beliefs that challenge social inequality. Data from the 1996 General Social Survey suggest that education tends to have a greater positive impact on rejection of group segregation and rejection of victim-blaming explanations for inequality than it does on recognition of discrimination or endorsement of group-based remedies for inequality. This pattern is consistent with the view that education reproduces rather than challenges inequality, and it is evident for white men, white women, and African American men. African American women present an exception, which is considered in terms of the unique structural location and historical legacy surrounding African American women's relationship to education.
Researchers hold that the racial democracy ideology fosters a rejection of discrimination-based explanations for racial inequality, thereby affecting antiracist mobilization. This study finds that Brazilians understand the discriminatory basis of inequality and that an attitudinal dimension associated with racial democracy strongly increases the likelihood of that understanding. Negative stereotyping produces a smaller opposite effect, and "race" is not a significant predictor. Finally, Brazilian and American racial attitudes differ considerably in explaining black disadvantage. These findings question perceptions of Brazilian racial attitudes and the efficacy of dominant theories for their analysis, suggesting a context-driven approach to theorizing and for antidiscrimination strategizing.
When ideologies are stated as normative and general tenets, they tend to be accepted. This study hypothesized (1) that in an industrial community, the acceptance of the ideology of opportunity would decrease when its tenets were viewed as specific situations confronting persons of unequal economic rank, and (2) that endorsement of the tenets, expressed either in general or in situational terms, would be withheld more often by lower-income people than by those from higher-income strata. Confirmation of the hypotheses suggests that ideological adherence is greatest among those who profit most from the reiteration of the ideolgy.
Why are people who live in liberal welfare regimes so reluctant to support welfare policy? And why are people who live in social democratic welfare regimes so keen to support welfare policy? This article seeks to give an institutional account of these cross-national differences. Previous attempts to link institutions and welfare attitudes have not been convincing. The empirical studies have had large difficulties in finding the expected effects from regime-dependent differences in self-interest, class interest, and egalitarian values. This article develops a new theoretical macro—micro link by combining the literature on deservingness criteria and the welfare regime theory. The basic ideas are that three regime characteristics, (a) the degree of universalism in welfare policy, (b) the differences in economic resources between “the bottom” and “the majority,” and (c) the degree of job opportunities, have a profound impact on the public deservingness discussion and thereby on public support for welfare policy.
This study assessed the relationship between attributions for wealth and poverty, beliefs about income inequality and support for progressive and restrictive welfare policies. An updated scale was developed to measure attributions for poverty. “Culture of poverty” items and new structural items loaded strongly, contributing to the development of a more contemporary scale for measuring attributions for poverty. Support for progressive welfare policies was predicted by structural attributions for poverty, dissatisfaction with income inequality, and attributing wealth to privilege, whereas restrictive welfare policies were predicted by individualistic attributions for poverty and wealth. Strategies for building support for progressive welfare policies are discussed.
Democracies, and the citizenries that stand at their center, are not natural phenomena; they are made and sustained through politics. Government policies can play a crucial role in this process, shaping the things publics believe and want, the ways citizens view themselves and others, and how they understand and act toward the political system. Yet, while political scientists have said a great deal about how publics influence policies, they know far less about the ways policies influence publics. In this article, we seek to clarify how policies, once enacted, are likely to affect political thought and action in the citizenry. Such effects are hard to locate within the standard framework of approaches to mass behavior, and they are generally ignored by program evaluators and policy analysts. To bridge this gap, we direct attention toward a long and vibrant, but underappreciated, line of inquiry we call the “political tradition” of mass behavior research. Drawing this tradition together with recent work on “policy feedback,” we outline a framework for thinking about how policies influence mass politics. The major types of such effects include defining membership; forging political cohesion and group divisions; building or undermining civic capacities; framing policy agendas, problems, and evaluations; and structuring, stimulating, and stalling political participation.