How do we prefer to distribute wealth: fraternally, Christianly, or equally? A world where everyone is extremely poor would be ideal in terms of equality, but is that really what we want? These tricky questions are answered differently by psychologists, anthropologists, primatologists, and philosophers.
People worry when they see injustice that they believe is the cause of economic inequality, and such concern is legitimate to the extent that your income and wealth are due to your birth, including the wealth of your parents, gender and skin color. We are also concerned about the possible consequences of economic inequality – the destruction of democracy or the growth of crime. What most people care about is poverty – not that someone has less, but that those who have less have too little.
Harry Frankfurt points out that few people care about the disparity between the very rich and the very wealthy, even though their wealth could be distributed more evenly. More often, however, the disparity between middle-income and poor people is a cause for concern. A world in which everyone is devastatingly poor would be ideal in terms of equality, but few would prefer it to the world we live in, he says. So “equality” is not something we really value.1
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Some of Frankfurt’s arguments are technical, but it’s not hard to come up with examples of how the pursuit of equality makes the world a worse place. One of the American comedians has a number based on the fact that his five-year-old daughter’s toy is broken and she demands that her father break her sister’s toy, establishing equality.
Is Frankfurt right when he says that economic equality has no value in itself? Many scientists are of a different opinion. Primatologist Frans de Waal expresses the popular view when he writes, “Robin Hood was right. An even distribution of wealth is in line with the deepest desires of humanity.”
Meanwhile, researchers have found that when children are asked to distribute items to strangers, children tend to share equally. Psychologists Alex Shaw and Kristina Olson told children aged six to eight about two boys, Dan and Mark, who cleaned their room and were to be rewarded with erasers. But there were five erasers, and it was impossible to divide them equally. The children overwhelmingly offered to throw away the fifth eraser, even if it is possible to give it to one of the boys without the other knowing about it, and there is no threat of anger or envy.
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It may seem that children’s responses reflect a burning desire for equality, but it is more likely that it is a desire for justice. Dan and Mark should get the same awards because they did the same job. But when the scientists told the kids that Dan had done more than Mark, the young participants didn’t hesitate to give three erasers to Dan and two to Mark. In other words, they didn’t care about inequality as long as it was fair.
In a study by Mark Sheskin’s group at Yale University, they found that young children prefer a distribution where they get some advantage over an equal distribution where everyone gets the same thing. For example, children like to get a one if the other child gets a zero than to be in a situation where everyone gets two.
This conclusion is consistent with what many psychologists have established and many parents see. When treats are distributed, children are very upset if they get less than others, but are quite happy with life if they get more. Other primates behave in the same way. Monkeys like cucumbers and, as a rule, a monkey is pleased when he is given a cucumber. But if she gets a cucumber after another monkey has been given grapes, which they love very much, she will be beside herself. At the same time, the monkey with the grapes is extremely pleased with its advantage.
Pass the tests
- What is your positive strength?
- Are your reproaches against your partner fair?
We see no evidence that humans or any other species value equality per se.
Arguments for a natural tendency toward equality are based on observations of small groups that actually appear to be equal. In small groups, benefits are distributed roughly equally, the weak are taken care of, and the power of leaders is limited.
It is tempting to think that the behavior of small groups reflects a natural desire for equality, but the anthropologist Christopher Boehm, who studies these groups, says otherwise. He argues that such structures arise because no one wants to get into trouble. Individuals in these communities end up roughly equal, as each is concerned that no one has too much power over him. Individuals who would otherwise be of lower status are smart enough to form a broad and strong coalition. Due to their unity, they constantly keep the more assertive alpha subjects in their midst, and as a result, egalitarianism becomes a kind of political hierarchy: by joining forces, the weak actively dominate the strong. Christopher Bem explains that if someone in a small community tries to take on the role of dictator, everyone else either ignores or ridicules his attempts, and if he does not take the hints, he can be beaten, expelled from the group or killed. But this is more difficult to do in a society that unites millions, where relationships are no longer interpersonal, where there are powerful weapons and camps.
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Behaviorists Michael Norton and Dan Ariely recently presented a simple graph of the distribution of wealth among Americans, in which people in the richest of the five groups own X of the wealth, the next group own Y percent, and so on. They concluded that there is a misconception among Americans about the degree of inequality in the country. US residents think that the two least wealthy groups own 9% of the total wealth, and the wealthiest group owns 59%, while the real ratio is 0,3% and 84%.
When asked how they see the ideal distribution, Americans, regardless of their political views, said they would like more equality. They do not even consider Sweden an ideal, which is often called a nanny country.
These are interesting conclusions, but Harry Frankfurt’s arguments make us wonder what they really mean. Dan Ariely insists that Americans want equality. But when asked to imagine a model of an ideal society, the majority of respondents chose a model in which the wealthiest group is three times as wealthy as the least wealthy. This makes us take seriously Frankfurt’s doubts about what we really want and his concern that we think too much about relative differences and too little about justice and the suffering of the poor.
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1 H. Frankfurt «On Inequality» (Princeton University Press, 2015).