ISPP Lisboa presentation

# Does information about inequality and poverty influence opportunity beliefs?
## *A survey experiment*
 
<hr>
### Luis Maldonado, _Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile_ - lmaldona@uc.cl
### Juan Carlos Castillo, _Universidad de Chile & COES_
### (Leslie McCall, _Stone Center of Economic Inequality_)

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# Background

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## Research context

- FONDECYT grant 1160921: **The moral economy of meritocracy and redistributive preferences** (Juan Castillo, Luis Maldonado & Jorge Atria)

- 2016-2020

- Qualitative studies (interviews & focus groups)

- Secondary data analysis (ISSP)

- Survey experiments

- More information & updates on our project website in Researchgate: [https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-moral-economy-of-meritocracy-and-redistributive-preferences](https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-moral-economy-of-meritocracy-and-redistributive-preferences)

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## Country context

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## Country context

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## Country context

.small[Source: WVS 1990-2012 and ISSP 2016. Figure on the left is level of agreement with *Incomes should be made more equal*; Figure on the right is option *Definitely should be the government’s responsibility to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor*]
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## Country context

.small[Source: Pilot study (non representative of Chilean population). Question is: *Do you think that the quantity of poor people in Chile today is larger, smaller or about the same as it was 20 years ago?*]

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# This study

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## Main concept: Meritocracy

- Allocation of rewards according to personal effort and talent (Young, 1962)

- Considered as a "myth" that legitimates inequality in modern societies (Young, 1962; Hadjar, 2008; Kunovich and Slomczynski, 2007; McNamee and Miller, 2004; Arrow, Bowles, and Durlauf, 2000)

- Different meritocratic dimensions (Castillo, Torres, Atria, and Maldonado, 2018)

- **perception** of meritocracy (descriptive)

- **preferences** for meritocracy (normative)

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![](images/esquema1.png)

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![](images/esquema2.png)

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![](images/esquema3.png)

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![](images/esquema4.png)

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## McCall, Burk, Laperrière, and Richeson (2017)

- Inequality information -> opportunity beliefs ("get ahead" battery GSS/ISSP)
  - more weight to structural factors (as wealthy family)
  - less weight to individual factors (as hard work)

## ... we add

- Poverty information treatment
- Separate opportunity items instead of structural & individual factors
- Education item
- Previous knowledge checks

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## Objective & Hypoteses

- **Objective**: We examine whether exposure to objective information about economic inequality and poverty affects opportunity beliefs

- **Hypothesis**:

- information about poverty reduction reinforce the meritocratic dream and therefore leads to believe more in individual than structural factors.

- information about large inequality undermines the meritocratic dream and therefore leads to believe more in structural than individual factors.

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# Research design

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## Data

1.  Convenience sample for pilot study was collected in July (this week) 2019, by _Nequest_, an online panel company that works in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

-   N= 1,328 respondents that live in Santiago de Chile.

-   Duration (median): 11 minutes.

-   96% of participants finish the questionary.

-   Effective sample has 794 respondents.

-   We use quotes for gender, education, and age: 55% women, 95% has secondary or higher.

2.  Questionnaire and random assignment by using _Qualtrics_.

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## Treatments

-   Three conditions

1.  **Poverty condition**: Information about evolution of poverty in Chile during 1990-2015.

2.  **Control condition**: Information about consume of cigarette in Chile during the last decades.

3.  **Inequality condition**: Information about income inequality in Chile in terms of index 10/10 that shows Chile as one of the countries with the highest income inequality within OECD.

- We designed _manipulation checks_ for each one of these three conditions.
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### 1. Poverty condition: "A series of studies show a decrease in poverty in Chile during the last decades ..."

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### 1. Poverty condition: "A series of studies show a decrease in poverty in Chile during the last decades ..."

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### 2. Control condition: "A series of studies show a decrease in cigarretes consumption in Chile during the last decades ..."

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### 3. Inequality condition: "A series of studies show that Chile presents a high level of economic inequality ..."

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## Outcomes & moderators

-   Opportunity beliefs: Battery of ISSP, social inequality module.

-   **Structural factors**: a) coming from a wealthy family and b) having well-educated parents.

-   **Individual factors**: c) hard work and d) ambition.

-   We also use the item e) having a good education yourself.

-  Moderators:

- **Egalitarianism**: "income should be made more equal, even though individual effort is not rewarded" (1), or "individual effort should be rewarded despite of generating income differences" (10)

- **Perception of poverty evolution**: increased; the same, decreased.

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##  Covariates and method

-   **Covariates**: socio-demographic characteristics.

-   **Methods**

-   Randomization: Covariates are balanced among treatment conditions.

-   Responses to manipulation checks are associated with socio-demographic variables.

-   Intent to treat effect (ITT) with regressions for ordinal dependent variables.

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# Results

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<table cellspacing="0" align="center" style="border: none;">
<caption align="top" style="margin-bottom:0.3em;">Treatment effects: Ordinal logit, odds ratios</caption>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: left; border-top: 2px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid black; padding-right: 12px;"></th>
<th style="text-align: left; border-top: 2px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid black; padding-right: 12px;">Family</th>
<th style="text-align: left; border-top: 2px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid black; padding-right: 12px;">Parent educ.</th>
<th style="text-align: left; border-top: 2px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid black; padding-right: 12px;">Education</th>
<th style="text-align: left; border-top: 2px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid black; padding-right: 12px;">Ambition</th>
<th style="text-align: left; border-top: 2px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid black; padding-right: 12px;">Hard work</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">Poverty</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">-0.98</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">-0.91</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.46**</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.16</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.18</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;"></td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.15)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.14)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.23)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.18)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.19)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">Inequality</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.44**</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.15</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.20</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.04</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">1.31*</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;"></td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.23)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.18)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.19)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.16)</td>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;">(0.21)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-bottom: 2px solid black;">N</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 2px solid black;">794</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 2px solid black;">794</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 2px solid black;">794</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 2px solid black;">794</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 2px solid black;">794</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding-right: 12px; border: none;" colspan="7">***p &lt; 0.01, **p &lt; 0.05, *p &lt; 0.1</td>
</tr>
</table>

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## The effect of poverty condition on **having a good education yourself** by moderators

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# Discussion

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-   Critical role of contexts: increasing economic oppotunities vs. higher economic inequality.

-   Significant effect of poverty’s information on *having a good
    education yourself*.

-   Opportunity model of beliefs about economic inequality

1.  **Open question I**: Descriptive analysis suggests a rising demand for redistribution in a context of increasing economic opportunities.

2.  **Open question II**: Explanatory mechanisms of the effect of perceptions of economic inequality on opportunity beliefs.

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## Current stage: Design of the final study

1. **Effect of information about inequality and poverty on opportunity beliefs**

-   Online Panel by using Netquest with three waves: a) first to collect pre-treatment information (covariates and moderators); b) treatments and outcomes; c) follow up to evaluate persistence of the effects.

-   To include all relevant items to measure opportunity beliefs.

-   Moderation: egalitarianism and perception of poverty development.

2.  Registration of pre-analysis plan.

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# References

.small[
[1] K. J. Arrow, S. Bowles, and S. N. Durlauf, ed. _Meritocracy
and Economic Inequality_. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University
Press, 2000. ISBN: 978-0-691-00467-9 978-0-691-00468-6.

[2] J. C. Castillo, A. Torres, J. Atria, et al. _Meritocracia y
Desigualdad Económica: Percepciones, Preferencias e Implicancias_.
Preprint. SocArXiv, may. 2018. DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/qkpu4.

[3] A. Hadjar. _Meritokratie Als Legitimationsprinzip_. Wiesbaden:
VS Verlag, 2008.

[4] S. Kunovich and K. M. Slomczynski. "Systems of Distribution
and a Sense of Equity: A Multilevel Analysis of Meritocratic
Attitudes in Post-Industrial Societies". En. In: _European
Sociological Review_ 23.5 (ene. 2007), pp. 649-663. ISSN:
0266-7215, 1468-2672. DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcm026.

[5] L. McCall, D. Burk, M. Laperrière, et al. "Exposure to Rising
Inequality Shapes Americans' Opportunity Beliefs and Policy
Support". En. In: _Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences_ (ago. 2017), p. 201706253. ISSN: 0027-8424, 1091-6490.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706253114.

[6] S. McNamee and R. Miller. _The Meritocracy Myth_. 2004th ed.
Lanham Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. ISBN: 978-0-7425-1055-5.

[7] M. Young. _The Rise of the Meritocracy_. Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1962.
]
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## Does information about inequality and poverty influence opportunity beliefs?
<hr>
### Luis Maldonado, _Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile_ - lmaldona@uc.cl
### Juan Carlos Castillo, _Universidad de Chile & COES_
### (Leslie McCall, _Stone Center of Economic Inequality_)

### ... also with the contribution of our research assistants Julio Iturra & Constanza Ayala