2006/06/01 by Lars Osberg, Timothy M. Smeeding · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies #Social Policy and Reform Studies #Income, Poverty, and Inequality
paper · doi:10.1177/000312240607100305
openalex publication_date 2006/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries? One tradition in sociology suggests American “exceptionalism,” while another argues for convergence across nations in social norms, such as attitudes toward inequality. This article uses International Social Survey Program (ISSP) microdata to compare attitudes in different countries toward what individuals in specific occupations “do earn” and what they “should earn,” and to distinguish value preferences for more egalitarian outcomes from other confounding attitudes and perceptions. The authors suggest a method for summarizing individual preferences for the leveling of earnings and use kernel density estimates to describe and compare the distribution of individual preferences over time and cross-nationally. They find that subjective estimates of inequality in pay diverge substantially from actual data, and that although Americans do not, on the average, have different preferences for aggregate (in)equality, there is evidence for: