The paradox of inequality
Income Inequality and Belief in Meritocracy Go Hand in Hand
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4237307 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J J B Mijs (0000-0002-7895-0028, London School of Economics & Political Science, International Inequalities Institute, London, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 7-35 |
| Publication date | 2021-07-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Socio-Economic Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1475-1461 • E-ISSN: 1475-147X |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ser/mwy051 |
| OpenAlex | W2914274646 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 279 |
| References cited | 94 |
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
Conviction · Economic inequality · Economics · Elite · Inequality · Meritocracy · Political economy · Political science · Positive economics · Social inequality · Social mobility · Social science · Sociology · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Beyond anomie
Explaining support for redistribution
Why We Don't Mind the Gap
Do inequalities predict fear of crime? Empirical evidence from Mexico
Anomie or imitation? The Werther effect of celebrity suicides on suicide rates in 34 OECD countries, 1960-2014
Perceiving economic inequality in everyday life decreases tolerance to inequality
Economic inequality and socioeconomic ranking inform attitudes toward redistribution
Greed, Envy, and Admiration
Perceived health inequalities
The psychosocial effects of economic inequality depend on its perception
Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts
Access to Higher Education and Support for Meritocracy
Economic Self-Interest and Support for Income Redistribution from Early Adulthood to Midlife
The Hierarchy of Self‐Positions
When and why is economic inequality seen as fair
Preferences for redistribution
Legitimizing Inequality
Beyond individual performance
Explaining Chile’s Estallido Social
Welfare State Deservingness in the Era of Mass Higher Education
Do Group-Based Inequalities Feel More Unjust? Experimental Evidence from Economically Disadvantaged Groups in India, South Africa, and the United States
Higher education expansion and attainment gaps in meritocratic beliefs
Whose merit, which redistribution? Elites, taxes, and transfers in Brazil and South Africa
How Information about Inequality Impacts Belief in Meritocracy
The Meaning of Merit
Unfair inequality and the demand for redistribution
Rising inequality
Más profesionales en ciencia, ingeniería y tecnología, más movilidad intergeneracional de ingresos en Latinoamérica
Producerist populist attitudes and electoral support for populism in the USA and Western Europe
Three types of income inequality
Consolidation and change
Who deserves student finance? Results from a survey experiment in six advanced capitalist economies
Competitive school environments and socioeconomic achievement inequality
Whether people justify and challenge economic inequality depends on the activities of social movements
Untangling the tolerance of socioeconomic inequality
Availability of Banking Services and Income Inequality
Multiply-Situated Self and the Role of Community
The perception of economic inequality in everyday life
Are you interested in economic inequality? Depends on where you live
Pobreza, desigualdad y religión
Income inequality predicts competitiveness and cooperativeness at school
Deservingness heuristics drive redistributive choices, but weights on recipient effort vary
Social hierarchies and meritocracy
Objective Status and Perceived Equality in Contemporary China
Influencia de la inducción del individualismo y el colectivismo en la aceptación y el rechazo de la desigualdad en jóvenes españoles y costarricenses
Preserving white privileges in organizations
Reducing gender economic inequality
Influence falling income inequality for social stability
Merit and ressentiment
Subjective Inequality and Well-being in South Korea
Why Limitarianism Fails on its Own Premises – an Egalitarian Critique
Cultural values, system justification, meritocratic beliefs, and evaluations of governments' performance in handling the Covid ‐19 crisis
Cultural psychology of inequality
School meritocracy
Learning from contact with poorer (richer) others? Perceived unfairness, prospect of upward mobility, and preferences for taxing the rich
How Career Development Is Affected When Students Work in Precarious Jobs
Being resilient to close the gap
Lessons from abroad
Fairness perceptions of educational inequality
Perception of economic inequality
Meritocracy beliefs and intolerance towards wealth inequality among higher subjective social status Filipinos ( Creencias meritocráticas e intolerancia ante la desigualdad económica entre la población filipina de nivel socioeconómico subjetivo alto )
Conspiracy Beliefs and the Perception of Intergroup Inequalities
Prospects of Downward Mobility Cause Status Anxiety and Life Dissatisfaction
“I have to pick a percentage now”
Causal Beliefs for Socioeconomic Status Attainment Scale
Changing attitudes toward redistribution
Does inequality migrate? The development of income inequality across German states
Education, the new politics of differentiation and ordinal citizenship
Individual values predict desiring more economic inequality
Meritocracy
A Little Help from My Friends? Navigating the Tension Between Social Capital and Meritocracy in the Job Search
Creyentes Religiosos en España por Clases Sociales
Responsibility, risk and climate policy support
Belief in School Meritocracy and the Legitimization of Social and Income Inequality
Temporal change in inequality perceptions and effects on political attitudes
Visualizing Belief in Merit and Privilege, 1930 to 2020
The Inequity Z
Bringing in Theory Building and Social-Political Context to Understand and Reduce Inequality
Effort versus Advantage
Uncovering misperceptions of social inequalities
Knowing one’s place? The role of income inequality in shaping positioning bias across 29 countries
Cross-class interactions and subjective inequality
Perceptions of inequality and meritocracy
Justification trajectories for pension inequality in Chile (2016–2023)
Rewealthization in twenty-first century Western countries
Effects of socioeconomic status on right-wing voting intentions
Some psychological determinants of broad union attitudes
Authoritarian and Populist Challenges to Democracy Correspond to a Lack of Economic, Social, and Cultural Capitals
The Socialization of Meritocracy and Market Justice Preferences at School
Community contexts, socioeconomic status, and meritocratic beliefs and perceptions in China
Agentic selves, agentic stories
Economic Inequality in History
Intergenerational mobility through inhabited meritocracy
Is America coming apart? Socioeconomic segregation in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and social networks, 1970–2020
UK higher education, neoliberal meritocracy, and the culture of the new capitalism
Who Supports the Digitalization of Education? New Survey Evidence From Six OECD Countries
Economic Hardship and Support for Redistribution
Hope under siege
Education cleavages, or market society and the rise of authoritarian populism
Oscillating between populism and liberalism in the Philippines
Relative deprivation and social justice
The Belief in a Just World
Inequality and the Measurement of Residential Segregation by Income in American Neighborhoods
Why Wealthier People Think People Are Wealthier, and Why It Matters
Relationships Between Intergroup Contact and Prejudice Among Minority and Majority Status Groups
Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics
Who’s for Meritocracy? Individual and Contextual Variations in the Faith
Money, Morals, and Manners
Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe
Social Resilience in the Neo-Liberal Era
The Dynamics of Opportunity in America
Following or Leading Public Opinion? Social Security Policy and Public Attitudes Since 1997
The Undeserving Rich
How Elastic Are Preferences for Redistribution? Evidence from Randomized Survey Experiments
Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time
Facing Up to the American Dream Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation
Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution
Misperceiving inequality
Biased perceptions of income distribution and preferences for redistribution
The median-voter hypothesis, income inequality, and income redistribution
Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998
Top Incomes in the Long Run of History
Framing the Future
What Do Children Know About Their Futures
Subjective Inequality
Inequality Is a Problem of Inference
The moral economy of inequality
Public support for redistribution
The effect of macroeconomic and social conditions on the demand for redistribution
Social and Ethnic Segregation in Europe
Ethnic Stratification and Patterns of Income Inequality Around the World
Merit and blame in unequal societies
Income inequality and solidarity in Europe
Perceptions of meritocracy in the land of opportunity
America's Changing Attitudes Toward Welfare and Welfare Recipients, 1938-1995
The Sociological Imagination
Public Attitudes towards Income Redistribution
The poor “sociological imagination” of the rich
A typology of activation incentives
A Bedrock of Support? Trends in Welfare State Attitudes in Sweden, 1981–2010
Public Policy, Economic Inequality, and Poverty
Religion, Race/Ethnicity, and Beliefs about Poverty
Facing Up to the American Dream
Priming meritocracy and the psychological justification of inequality
Sources of Variation in Working Class Images of Society
Neoliberalism and Symbolic Boundaries in Europe
A Broken Public? Americans’ Responses to the Great Recession
Beliefs about Inequality
My Poor Friend
Misperceptions of Relative Affluence and Support for International Redistribution
Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Citizenship
Trends
Two Multilevel Modeling Techniques for Analyzing Comparative Longitudinal Survey Datasets
A Decade of System Justification Theory
Testing Theories of American Politics
Redistribution Without a Median Voter
False Consciousness or Class Awareness? Local Income Inequality, Personal Economic Position, and Belief in American Meritocracy
Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion
Income Inequality Influences Perceptions of Legitimate Income Differences
Living With Inequality
Kicking away the ladder? Poverty reduction and public support for redistribution in emerging economies
"Fair" Inequality? Attitudes toward Pay Differentials
From Poverty to Perversity
Precarious Work, Insecure Workers
Inequality in Children's Contexts
Economic inequality and public demand for redistribution
Inequality, public opinion and redistribution
Inequality and the demand for redistribution
What is missing? Cultural processes and causal pathways to inequality
Concentrated Disadvantage and Beliefs about the Causes of Poverty
Visualizing Belief in Meritocracy, 1930-2010
Lay Perceptions of Inequality and Social Structure
Attitudes towards income inequality
How three narratives of modernity justify economic inequality
The Legitimation of Income Inequality in State-socialist and Market Societies
Inequality
Inequality of Opportunity in Comparative Perspective
Inequality in Earnings at the Close of the Twentieth Century
Income Inequality
Years AfterBrown
The Random Effects in Multilevel Models
Multilevel Modelling of Country Effects
Income Inequality and Income Segregation
Unequal views of inequality
Is Income Inequality Related to Tolerance for Inequality
Intergenerational Social Mobility and Popular Explanations of Poverty
The Unfulfillable Promise of Meritocracy
| Unique citing works | 279 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 46,5 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 271 |