“Cultures of Inequality”: Ethnicity, Immigration, Social Welfare, and Imprisonment

Abstract

The authors discuss the shift from classic culture of poverty arguments to more contemporary uses of cultural variables in explaining criminal justice practices in Western industrialized countries. The authors use “cultures of inequality” to refer to the increasing taste or tolerance for inequality in the general population across nations. They also elaborate a potential link between perceived threat of others and growing tastes for inequality, thereby extending the classic threat hypothesis. Using country-level data and data from the World Values Survey, the authors find that countries with higher than average tastes for inequality also have higher income inequality, more population heterogeneity, and higher percentages of others in prison. However, people in these countries do not necessarily have more hostile attitudes toward others . The United States shares several characteristics with other Western countries but appears to be driving the difference in the mean taste for inequality between countries with low and high imprisonment of others .