Drawing an inequality map

In this chapter we undertake an empirical investigation of attitudes towards the basic principles of inequality comparisons, based on our purpose-built questionnaires. We will have a first attempt at answering the question of whether the standard formalisation of inequality comparisons – such as that outlined in chapter 2 – captures the picture of inequality rankings that may be in the heads of those who think about inequality without the benefit of studying the standard story first.

Not all of the questionnaire experiments were directly about inequality; some of them were phrased in terms of social welfare or poverty, which are to be discussed in later chapters. Right now we are going to focus on just the issues that were raised in the theoretical discussion of chapter 2; chapters 5 to 7 then take the approach on into three related areas of interest concerning distributional questions.

The views expressed could in principle be used to provide a type of inequality map of our student respondents' attitudes to inequality. Although this idea is simple in principle, drawing an inequality map in practice can be quite complex.