Acceptance of Inequality Between Children: Large-Scale Experimental Evidence from China and Norway

Abstract

In a novel large-scale experiment, we study how adults in two societies, Shanghai (China) and Norway, make real distributive decisions involving children. We find that acceptance of inequality between children increases with the ages of the children, is affected by the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution, and is lower than acceptance of inequality between adults. We document a large cross-societal difference in inequality acceptance: adults in Shanghai implement twice as much inequality between children compared with adults in Norway. Finally, we show that the willingness to accept inequality between children is predictive of attitudes to child policies.