Our New Paper on Income Mobility and Income Inequality Now In Press in Perspectives on Psychological Science
Our new paper with SFU’s Dylan Wiwad and Lara Aknin, Income Mobility Breeds Tolerance for Income Inequality: Cross-national and Experimental Evidence, is now in press at Perspectives on Psychological Science. The abstract appears below, and the you can download the pre-print draft here.
American politicians often justify income inequality by referencing the opportunities people have to move between economic stations. Though past research has shown associations between income mobility and resistance to wealth redistribution policies, no experimental work has tested whether perceptions of mobility influence tolerance for inequality. Here we present a cross-national comparison showing that income mobility is associated with tolerance for inequality, and experimental work demonstrating that perceptions of higher mobility directly affect attitudes towards inequality. We find support for both the prospect of upward mobility, and the view that one’s economic station is the product of one’s own efforts, as mediating mechanisms.
Image credit: The Economist.