In)Equality and (In)Justice

Bibliographic Data

ID4780445
AuthorsG Jasso (0000-0002-7416-2358, IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume16
Issue2
Pages189
Publication date2016-08-31
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCivitas - Revista de Ciências Sociais (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1519-6089 • E-ISSN: 1984-7289
PublisherEdipucrs (PUBLISHER • BR)
DOI10.15448/1984-7289.2016.2.23118
OpenAlexW2511188388
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited5

Understanding the connection between inequality and justice is important because justice is classically regarded as the first line of defense against self-interest and inequality. Absent a strong and clear link between inequality and justice, the sense of justice would not awaken to exert its moral suasion, no matter how great the inequality or how fast its increase. We obtain exact links between economic inequality and three parameters of the justice evaluation distribution –the mean, median, and variance–across a comprehensive set of inequality measures and a substantial starter set of just reward scenarios. This work shows that there is no general necessary connection between inequality and justice. There is, however, a striking pattern in some situations: as economic inequality increases, the average of the justice evaluations moves deeper into the territory of unjust underreward, and the distribution stretches outward, increasing the gulf between underrewarded and overrewarded and hollowing out the middle class

Economic Justice · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · Gender Politics and Representation · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Political Economy and Marxism

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