TY - JOUR
T1 - Inequality in the Distribution of a Good is a Bad, and Inequality in the Distribution of a Bad is a Good
AU - Jasso, Guillermina
N1 - Funding Information:
An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Seattle, WA, August 2016. I am grateful to conference participants and to Carter Butts, James Hollander, Eugene Johnsen, Jun Kobayashi, Arnout van der Rijt, the anonymous referees, and the Editors for valuable comments and suggestions. I also gratefully acknowledge the intellectual and financial support of New York University.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/8/1
Y1 - 2017/8/1
N2 - This article presents a theorem connecting the goodness or badness of a thing with the goodness or badness of inequality in the thing's distribution. The theorem, which applies to cardinally measurable things like income, debt, years in prison, disease risk, and risk of unemployment, states that if an observer regards the original thing as a good (bad), then that observer regards inequality in the thing's distribution as a bad (good). The proof uses three inequality measures and two fairness measures embedding observer framing of things as good or bad. The theorem touches many themes in the sociological literature, not only goods and bads, inequality and stratification, the Weberian life chances, values, and attitudes toward inequality, but also, via its proof, fairness and moral development. Further, the theorem and its proof raise questions that provide new directions for theoretical and empirical research. For example, empirical tasks ahead include (1) learning more about inequality in bads (especially about their frequency distributions and inequality measures, to match the growing knowledge about differences across subgroups), and (2) studying both just rewards and justice evaluations, in both goods and bads, to assess the scope of justice concerns between earned and unearned things and between additive, transferable possessions and nonadditive, nontransferable characteristics. Finally, this work contributes to the growing understanding of the connections between inequality, justice, and the vast behavioural and social outcomes which inequality and justice, separately or together, generate.
AB - This article presents a theorem connecting the goodness or badness of a thing with the goodness or badness of inequality in the thing's distribution. The theorem, which applies to cardinally measurable things like income, debt, years in prison, disease risk, and risk of unemployment, states that if an observer regards the original thing as a good (bad), then that observer regards inequality in the thing's distribution as a bad (good). The proof uses three inequality measures and two fairness measures embedding observer framing of things as good or bad. The theorem touches many themes in the sociological literature, not only goods and bads, inequality and stratification, the Weberian life chances, values, and attitudes toward inequality, but also, via its proof, fairness and moral development. Further, the theorem and its proof raise questions that provide new directions for theoretical and empirical research. For example, empirical tasks ahead include (1) learning more about inequality in bads (especially about their frequency distributions and inequality measures, to match the growing knowledge about differences across subgroups), and (2) studying both just rewards and justice evaluations, in both goods and bads, to assess the scope of justice concerns between earned and unearned things and between additive, transferable possessions and nonadditive, nontransferable characteristics. Finally, this work contributes to the growing understanding of the connections between inequality, justice, and the vast behavioural and social outcomes which inequality and justice, separately or together, generate.
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U2 - 10.1093/esr/jcx062
DO - 10.1093/esr/jcx062
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85031816235
SN - 0266-7215
VL - 33
SP - 604
EP - 614
JO - European Sociological Review
JF - European Sociological Review
IS - 4
ER -