“Fair” Inequality? Attitudes toward Pay Differentials: The United States in Comparative Perspective

TLDR

Sociological debate centers on whether U.S. attitudes toward inequality are uniquely exceptional or converge with other nations. The study asks whether American views on economic inequality differ from those in other countries. Using ISSP microdata, the authors compare perceived versus deserved earnings across occupations, summarizing preferences with kernel density estimates to map cross‑national distributions.

Abstract

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: