Attitudes to inequality ten years after transition

Redmond, Gerry, Schnepf, Sylke and Suhrcke, Marc (2002) Attitudes to inequality ten years after transition (Innocenti Working Papers, 88) Florence, Italy. UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti 25pp.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to compare people’s attitudes to inequality at the end of the 1990s – the qualities they perceive are needed to get ahead, the role of government and rewards for employment – in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Western countries. Our data (from the 1999 International Social Survey Programme) suggest that overall, people in CEE express substantially more ‘egalitarian’ attitudes than those in the West, even after 10 years of economic adjustment to the market economy: Eastern Europeans’ much stronger dislike of existing income differences and their corresponding preference for governmental redistribution at least partly reflected in the fact that they consider the factors that actually govern the income generation process (and therefore constitute the driving forces of income inequality) as not in line with meritocratic principles, such as effort, intelligence and skills. Surprisingly, however, they share basically the same values as the West when it comes to the factors that should in principle determine income. This evidence presents policymakers in the transition countries with a challenge. While people support the notion that incomes should be determined by factors relevant to the working of market forces – ability to perform on the job, responsibility and education – a lot of people in Central and Eastern Europe believe that, in reality, many differences in income do not reflect merit, and – as a result – they are very concerned about the extent of inequality in their societies.

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