The Individual Perception of Wage Inequality: A Measurement Framework and Some Empirical Evidence

Andreas Kuhn ()
Additional contact information
Andreas Kuhn: Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training

No 9579, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper presents a simple conceptual framework specifically tailored to measure individual perceptions of wage inequality. Using internationally comparable survey data, the empirical part of the paper documents that there is huge variation in inequality perceptions both across and within countries as well as survey-years. Focusing on the association between aggregate-level inequality measures and individuals' subjective perception of wage inequality, it turns out that there is both a high correlation between the two measures as well as a considerable amount of misperception of the prevailing level of inequality. The final part of the analysis shows that subjective inequality perceptions appear to be more important, in a statistical sense, in explaining variation in individual-level attitudes towards social inequality than objective measures of inequality. This underlines the conceptual and practical importance of distinguishing between subjective perceptions of inequality and the true level of inequality.

Keywords: inequality perceptions; inequality; attitudes towards social inequality; (mis-)perceptions of socio-economic phenomena (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published - revised version published as `The Individual (Mis-)Perception of Wage Inequality: Measurement, Correlates and Implications' in: Empirical Economics, 2020, 59, 2039-2069

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9579.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9579

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().