Beliefs about Inequality

Americans' Views of What is and What Ought to be

James R. Kluegel, Eliot R. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138519435
• eBook ISBN: 9781351328982
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Motivated by the desire to explain how Americans perceive and evaluate inequality and related programs and policies, the authors conducted a national survey of beliefs about social and economic inequality in America. Here they present the results of their research on the structure, determinants, and certain political and personal consequences of these beliefs. The presentations serve two major goals; to describe and explain the central features of Americans' images of inequality. Beliefs About Inequality begins with a focus on people's perceptions of the most basic elements of inequality: the availability of opportunity in society, the causes of economic achievements, and the benefits and costs of equality and inequality. The book's analysis of the public's beliefs on these key issues is based on fundamental theories of social psychology and lays the groundwork for understanding how Americans evaluate inequality-related policies. The authors discuss the ultimate determinants of beliefs and the implications of their findings for social policies related to inequality. They propose that attitudes toward economic inequality and related policy are influenced by three major aspects of the current American social, economic, and political environment: a stable "dominant ideology" about economic inequality; individuals' social and economic status; and specific beliefs and attitudes, often reflecting "social liberalism" shaped by recent political debates and events.

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INTRODUCTION

Why are some Americans richer than I am? Do they work harder to succeed, or are they more talented than I am? Why are others poor: Are laziness and bad moral character primarily responsible for poverty or are lack of education and social and economic discrimination? Are the situations of the rich and the poor fair or unfair? And how am I to understand my own position in society? Perhaps my degree of economic well-being reflects my basic worth as a person, or perhaps I have experienced unusual barriers that have unfairly held me back from greater achievements. In the long run, do welfare programs or affirmative-action policies aid the disadvantaged, or do they undermine motivation and weaken the basis of the economic system? How much discrimination do racial minorities or working women experience today—isn’t discrimination largely a thing of the past?

Americans of all political views and economic levels frequently consider these and similar questions about the current structure and implications of economic inequality in our society. Some of these issues seem to be important aspects of understanding the world in general; children often ask basic questions about wealth, poverty, and fairness, for example (Leahy, 1983). Others become important in the political process, as governmental policies aimed at one or another aspect of inequality are proposed and debated. All the questions together, and the tentative, incomplete answers that people construct, form the roots of the American consciousness of inequality, the subject of our investigation in this book.

It has often been remarked that Americans’ attitudes about social welfare and other inequality-related policies have an inconsistent and sometimes seemingly contradictory quality. The most recent example is, of course, the sharp change in direction of federal policy associated with the Reagan administration’s goals of curtailing many of the redistributive programs developed since the New Deal. There are other examples as well. Americans generally accept the idea that blacks and other minorities have suffered from discrimination and maintain an abstract commitment to equal opportunity—coexisting with widespread white opposition to specific policies to implement equal opportunity (e.g., busing to desegregate schools, affirmative-action programs). Although Americans highly value equal citizenship rights and democratic politics in the abstract, in practice the right of the wealthy to wield disproportionate economic and political power is unchallenged. Finally, in the face of a general commitment to ameliorative measures for the very poor and to the right to be paid a basic living wage (floor limits on earnings), there is a widespread unwillingness to place an upper limit on incomes or inheritances. These aspects of contradiction and compromise in Americans’ beliefs and attitudes about inequality have stood as puzzles since at least the time of Alexis de Toqueville, drawing opinions from a variety of analysts and commentators.

Motivated by the desire to explain how Americans perceive and evaluate inequality and related programs and policies, we conducted a national survey of beliefs about social and economic inequality. Here we present the results of our research on the structure, determinants, and certain political and personal consequences of these beliefs. Our presentations in this book serve two major goals: to describe and explain the central features of Americans’ images of inequality.

A DESCRIPTION OF AMERICANS’ BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES

Our first goal is to provide a current, comprehensive description of Americans’ beliefs and attitudes about inequality, including evidence concerning stability and change in such beliefs. The data collection for our survey, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Mental Health, took place in the summer and fall of 1980, mainly during the campaign that ended with the initial election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Telephone interviews averaging over 45 minutes long were conducted with a total of 2212 Americans, scientifically selected to represent the entire United States population aged 18 and over.

A comprehensive description of what Americans believe, based on this survey, and of recent changes in beliefs may help explain some apparent inconsistencies and contradictions. Some inconsistency may simply be illusory: This is a danger to the degree that our current knowledge about Americans’ beliefs is based on data from restricted or otherwise unrepresentative samples. Further, the seeming inconsistency and contradiction may be the product of a period of transition in beliefs about inequality. Recent events—the shift from the steady economic growth of the 1960s to the stagflation of the 1970s, agitation by the civil rights and women’s movements, debates about the successes or failures of antipoverty and other Great Society programs—may have substantially changed the ways Americans view aspects of inequality. The need to assess the impact of these events, many of which are unprecedented in American history, underlines the value of a current portrayal of public views. Another possibility is that younger people may adhere to substantially more liberal beliefs and attitudes than older ones. Age-group and over-time comparisons will allow us to test such hypotheses.

On many aspects of inequality, even the most rudimentary descriptions of public beliefs and attitudes are currently lacking, though other areas, such as “class consciousness” and some aspects of economic policy preferences, have been the subject of some research. There are several reasons for the failures of existing research to fill the gaps in description. The focus of research is fragmented among individual studies, as each investigator tends to study a single aspect of beliefs about inequality (opportunity alone, or social class alone, or income inequality alone). Data are available only sporadically, and often only on topical issues, as survey researchers ask questions related to current political issues or events. Samples tend to be small and unrepresentative, often restricted to specific cities or states, and sometimes questionably representative even of such limited areas. Finally, and perhaps most important, sociologically based research on beliefs and attitudes concerning inequality (e.g., Jackman & Jackman, 1983) often narrowly has focused on the single area of class perceptions as the central element of popular views on inequality, and often on a single question (Centers, 1949) as the measure of that construct (Kluegel & Smith, 1981). Identification with a social class (whether “middle” or “working”) is one facet of an individual’s views on the American economic system and his or her location in it, but exclusive attention to this construct has been harmful to a general breadth of focus in theoretical and empirical work.

Our survey of Americans’ beliefs and attitudes about inequality permits a more comprehensive description than does past research, for two reasons. First, our data are drawn from a representative sample of the population in general, unlike most existing studies such as Verba and Oren’s (1984) recent examination of beliefs about inequality in a small sample of “leaders.” We also collected additional data to permit more adequate descriptions of two theoretically important subgroups: blacks and the affluent. Demands for civil rights and equal opportunity by blacks and other racial minorities have been among the most important forces toward change in the American consciousness of inequality, so black–white comparisons on various beliefs and attitudes are of great interest. Also, the power held by the affluent in many institutions of politics, the professions, communication, and other areas makes their views on inequality of special concern.

The second major characteristic of our study is its description of public beliefs and attitudes on a wide range of inequality-related issues and policies, rather than just a few topical issues. Objective, comprehensive survey data can give a broader and more reliable picture of Americans’ beliefs and attitudes about inequality than other sources of information, such as inferences from election results. Different analysts tend to read different implications in election results, and it is clear that a voter’s choice in an election reflects many complex and interacting factors about the voter, the candidates, and the current political situation. From an election outcome, it is difficult at best to infer reliably the particular views on economic inequality that might have contributed to voters’ decisions.

There are many reasons for interest in the ways people think about inequality. Though public opinion obviously is not the sole determinant of public policy on such matters as the level of welfare spending or the nature of affirmative-action programs, shifts in public opinion are temporally related to the passage of relevant legislation (Burstein, 1979; Page & Shapiro, 1982; Monroe, 1983). In addition, appeals to public opinion are a potentially powerful resource for groups working for social change (civil rights or women’s rights groups, for example), and for presidents seeking to apply pressure to Congress. Popular views on inequality and related issues also shape perceptions of the fairness of policies, which can help or hinder the implementation of policy. Consider, for example, the widespread public views of busing for school desegregation as unfair and illegitimate and the resulting turmoil and difficulty in implementing that policy in some cities; or the public dislike for welfare programs, which often diminishes their effectiveness (Wilensky, 1975).

Beyond the scope of public policy per se, individuals’ views on inequality, opportunity, and related issues shape their private actions in important ways. An example is a small employer who is faced with a request from female employees for more equitable salaries in relationship to those of male employees. Such individual decisions, multiplied by thousands daily, are important in maintaining or reversing sex differences in economic outcomes. A different sort of example concerns individuals’ efforts toward economic advancement. Views of the relative effectiveness of various routes to mobility (education, joining a union, starting one’s own small business) will affect the specific direction of the ambitious individual’s efforts.

In sum, one central aim of this book is to present a current and comprehensive description of Americans’ views on social and economic inequality and related policies, including information about the extent, distribution, structure, and determinants of particular beliefs and attitudes.

A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

The second major goal of this book is to present a general theoretical perspective on beliefs and attitudes about inequality, along with empirical evidence for many aspects of the theory. Our perspective provides, we believe, a viable explanation for many characteristics of public opinion on issues related to inequality, including the fluctuating, inconsistent, and seemingly contradictory quality of public attitudes toward inequality and related programs. In Chapter 2 we will present our perspective in detail. Here we summarize its major features to provide an overview of the issues we will be addressing in subsequent chapters.

We propose that attitudes toward economic inequality and related policy are influenced by three major aspects of the current American social, economic, and political environment: (a) a stable “dominant ideology” about economic inequality; (b) individuals’ social and economic status; and (c) specific beliefs and attitudes, often reflecting “social liberalism,” shaped by recent political debates and events. First, beliefs and attitudes concerning inequality reflect the stable influence of general explanations of the workings of the American stratification system, widely held by the public, which others have labeled the “dominant stratification ideology” (Huber & Form, 1973). It might also be called the “logic of opportunity syllogism,” for it provides a deductive argument that justifies inequality of economic outcomes. The major premise in the argument is that opportunity for economic advancement based on hard work is plentiful. From this premise two deductions follow. Individuals are personally responsible for their own economic fate: Where one ends up in the distribution of economic rewards depends upon the effort one puts into acquiring and applying the necessary skills and attitudes and upon the native talent with which one begins. As a consequence, since individual outcomes are proportional to individual inputs (talent and effort), the resulting unequal distribution of economic rewards is, in the aggregate, equitable and fair.

Second, attitudes toward inequality are shaped by a person’s objective position in the stratification system. We will examine the influence of such factors as income differences, class differences in the conditions of work (in terms of autonomy, power, etc.), sex, race, age, and education. Social and economic status, of course, provide one basis for assessing an individual’s self-interest in supporting or opposing particular inequality-related policies. One’s social status also influences personal experiences of various kinds, such as the experience of poverty or affluence, fair or unfair treatment on the job, and so on, which may lead to generalizations about inequality and its bases and effects.

Third, attitudes toward inequality are shaped by “social liberalism,” an acceptance of social and political equality with groups such as blacks and women, without the bases of economic inequality being called into question. These attitudes have arisen in large part from recent political and economic changes, including the massive movement of women into the labor force, the social and political changes arising from the dismantling of legalized racial segregation, and an awakening to the presence of poverty in the midst of affluence, particularly in the 1960s. The impact of these events on contemporary attitudes is of two principal kinds. First, by many indications, beliefs and attitudes in several specific areas related to inequality have changed substantially in a liberal direction. The right to an old age with a decent standard of living and basic medical care through Social Security and Medicare has become so widely accepted that even the mention of benefit reductions elicits strong public protests—as in the early days of the Reagan administration. Survey data demonstrate marked reductions in traditional racial prejudice: overt racial bigotry and support for the denial of equal rights to blacks (Taylor, Sheatsley, & Greeley, 1978). And there is survey evidence for a similar trend of diminished support for sex-role traditionalism: belief in the appropriateness of a priori limits to women’s social and economic opportunity (Miller, Miller, & Schneider, 1980, pp. 177–178).

However, effects of recent political trends are often multiple, not limited to increases in social liberalism. The recent history of intergroup conflict over social and economic inequality, even as it has won increasing general acceptance of minority rights, has produced negative emotional responses, based on race, that color contemporary evaluations of inequality-related policy. Whites’ attitudes toward policies and programs that benefit black Americans may be the area where such negative intergroup emotions have been the most consequential. We will comment on the influence of this factor throughout the analyses presented in this book.

One proposition is a key element of our perspective. The prevalence and stability of belief in the dominant ideology, in the face of enduring objective features of the stratification system and changing beliefs and attitudes in some areas related to inequality, produces the inconsistency, fluctuation, and seeming contradiction in the attitudes toward inequality and related policy found in the American public. On balance, the dominant ideology disposes people to a conservative evaluation of welfare and other redistributive programs. Such programs are perceived as unnecessary because the stratification system currently presents ample opportunity to better oneself by individual efforts. Even if the necessity of such programs is admitted, their acceptance still depends on their conformity to the dominant ideology’s emphasis on individual responsibility and on the necessity of economic inequality to motivate people to achieve. On the other hand, many enduring objective features of social inequality, and changing beliefs and attitudes in some specific areas such as racial equality of opportunity, dispose people to what is conventionally labeled a liberal orientation. To achieve public acceptance, inequality-related policy must accommodate both the liberal orientation that provides the impetus for their existence and the conservative implications of the dominant ideology.

The need for accommodation is particularly strong because the conservative and liberal beliefs and attitudes are often found within the same person. Indeed, one aspect of the prevalence of the dominant ideology is that most people adhere to it to a greater or lesser extent. If the American population were composed of consistently liberal and conservative individuals, then fashioning inequality-related policy would be much simpler. Consistent policies could be designed, and their adoption would depend in part on the political balance between liberals and conservatives in the population. The absence of individual-level consistency, however, means that most policies and programs must accommodate both liberal and conservative beliefs, often a difficult matter. Welfare payments for support of dependent children provide a telling example. Our liberal sympathies urge us to support children in poverty because they are not responsible for the circumstances in which they were born. The dominant ideology, on the other hand, leads to such distrust of the personal character of parents receiving welfare that the restrictions and stigma attached to its allocation may act, according to some analysts (e.g., Feagin, 1975; Williamson, 1974a), to perpetuate a life in poverty for the children we intend to help.

Another important element of our perspective is the proposition that the ambivalent orientation to inequality and related policy, produced by the coexistence of liberal and conservative beliefs and attitudes within the same person, does not necessarily require resolution toward consistency. Put another way, one of the serious flaws of attempts to read general liberal or conservative trends into the outcomes of elections or changes in single beliefs over time is the implicit assumption of a drive toward cognitive consistency among all a person’s beliefs, attitudes, and v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Thinking about Inequality
• I Dominant-Ideology Beliefs
• II Policy Attitudes
• III Consequences of Beliefs about Inequality
• Appendix: Data Sources
• Bibliography
• Index