Fundamental and Gender-Based Wealth Inequalities: What Inequalities People Perceive and Desire and How They Want Society to Allocate Resources to Bridge the Gap

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Abstract

There is much to gain by jointly considering multiple group-based inequalities and changes therein. Here, we present two survey studies (Study 1 N = 979, Study 2 N = 994) on wealth inequalities between men and women (gender inequality) and between the wealthier and less wealthy half (fundamental inequality) in Switzerland. The findings concern what inequalities people perceive, what changes they desire, and how they think society should allocate resources to realize their individually desired changes. Despite people typically perceiving greater fundamental inequality, fundamental inequality was more commonly met with indifference compared to gender inequality, even from people from the less wealthy half. Further, people’s preferences for how resources should be allocated to realize the changes they individually desired did not reflect how big the desired changes were relative to one another and thereby how much wealth would have minimally been required to realize both changes. We call for research on the alignment of the changes that people desire and how they think resources should be allocated to realize these changes.

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