Publications
Publications
- January 2011
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time
By: Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely
Abstract
Disagreements about the optimal level of wealth inequality underlie policy debates ranging from taxation to welfare. We attempt to insert the desires of "regular" Americans into these debates, by asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to "build a better America" by constructing distributions with their ideal level of inequality. First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.
Keywords
Taxation; Policy; Perspective; Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Income; Demography; Debates; Welfare; Diversity; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; United States
Citation
Norton, Michael I., and Dan Ariely. "Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time." Perspectives on Psychological Science 6, no. 1 (January 2011): 9–12.
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