The Lottery of Birth : An Experimental Study on Intergenerational Inequality and Perceptions of Fairness

Abstract

Rising income inequality after the Covid-19 pandemic has been a frequently discussed topic among both academics and the general public. In this thesis we aim to expand our understanding into how income inequalities are perceived through the lens of inheritance. We conducted a survey experiment on the Norwegian population through the statistics company Norstat. Each respondent was presented with one treatment out of four, and asked to consider whether they perceived the hypothetical income inequality as fair or unfair. We then used a linear regression approach in order to analyse the collected data. Our experiment yielded several interesting results. First, we found that people generally were accepting of income inequalities that was a result of inheritance. In general, treatments that implied parental investment, in the form of capital transfers or academic encouragement, were considered more fair than those that may be attributed to luck. Furthermore, we also found that voters belonging to the right side of Norwegian politics were significantly more inclined to perceive income inequalities as fair.