A Life-Course Perspective on Attitudes Toward Distributive Justice Principles

Why is a concrete degree of objective social inequality considered by some individuals to be just, while others consider it unjust and illegitimate? An individual´s subjective evaluation of inequality depends on its normative orientation and attitudes toward distributive justice. These “order-related justice attitudes” comprise preferences for distributive justice principles such as equality, need, equity, and entitlement. Interestingly, there is little knowledge whether order-related justice attitudes are stable or change during an individual´s life.

Over their life-course individuals are embedded in different structural contexts such as family, school, and workplace. Research provides evidence that specific distributive justice principles are typically applied within certain contexts. Hence, individuals experience and learn here how distributional conflicts are typically resolved within these contexts when certain justice principles are routinely applied. The paper assumes that people develop their individual preferences toward distributive justice principles due to these structurally mediated learning experiences (socialization) and an individual´s position in the society´s inequality structure that is systematically connected to specific interests (rational choice).

In order to analyze change and stability in order-related justice attitudes, one needs longitudinal data that systematically capture the structural conditions individuals are nested in. For the first time such data are available in the German panel study ‘‘Legitimation of Inequality Over the Life Span’’ comprising survey data and extensive context information regarding the household, social network, and workplace.

The paper analyzes the change and stability in order-related justice attitudes and tests various hypotheses using data of two waves. It provides empirical evidence for the relevance of change in an individual´s socioeconomic position and workplace characteristics (gender composition, share of migrants). These findings give first insights of how preferences toward distributive justice develop over the life-course and consequently, also the legitimacy of inequalities.