Trends in the experience of injustice: Justice indexes about earnings in six societies, 1991-1996

This paper examines trends in the experience of injustice in six societies-Bulgaria, Czech Republic, East and West Germany, Hungary, and Russia-between 1991 and 1996. Using data collected by the International Social Justice Project, we estimate the justice index, JI1, and its decomposition into the amount of injustice attributable to poverty and the amount of injustice attributable to inequality; and we also examine gender differences in the justice index and its decomposition. The justice index is a summary measure of individuals' justice evaluations, and therefore the paper also takes a preliminary look at the two basic quantities that underlie the justice evaluation-actual earnings and just earnings-and their determinants, investigating, for the men of East and West Germany, the actual and just returns to schooling and experience in 1991 and 1996.