Does The Source Of Income Inequality Affect People’s Fair Preferences?

With the China’s economy fast developed,the standards of people’s living have been continuously improved.Meanwhile,the income gap between residents is also expanded and the people’s sense of unfairness in income distribution is increasing day by day.As a result,the issue of income inequality has been the hottest economic topic.The Party Central Committee and the State Council have always attached great importance to promoting the fairness of society and maintaining the income gap of rationalization.In the report of the 19 th National Congress,it once again emphasized that the dividend for reform and development should benefit all the people more fairly.It can be seen that scientifically and rationally adjusting the income gap and promoting social equity are issues that the state and the people have been paying attention to for a long time.This is also the focus of social work in the next period.However,addressing income inequality does not eliminate all inequalities because not all income inequalities are unfair.Many scholars believe that opportunity inequality is a key factor in causing unreasonable income inequality,and is also a major factor causing increased public injustice and social instability.Therefore,more and more scholars are encouraged to study the problem of inequality of opportunities.But now most of the domestic research on the issue of opportunity inequality adopts the questionnaire method,and this method has some shortcomings: one is that this data cannot reflect the causal effect between variables;the other is that the questionnaires obtained data on people’s subjective attitudes.People’s subjective expressions and actual behaviors are likely to differ.Fortunately,the experimental research method can overcome the above deficiencies and has more advantages in studying this problem.Therefore,this paper will use the method to study the problem of opportunity inequality.On the other hand,most of the foreign experimental research on the issue of opportunity inequality is based on the perspective of a spectator.However,in our real life,income disparity is a problem that each of us faces.Every policy that adjusts the difference in income will affect our own interests.On this issue,everyone is a stakeholder rather than a spectator.So,it is very important and necessary to study whether stakeholders support equality of opportunity.Therefore,based on the previous studies,this paper introduces both spectators and stakeholders,and further divides stakeholders into high-income and low-income people.Using experimental economics to study the problem of inequality of opportunity from the perspective of individual identity characteristics to expand and enrich this research.Since the problem of opportunity inequality in experimental economics can be reflected by studying people’s fairness preferences in different contexts,we seting up two experimental contexts according to Roemer’s definition of opportunity inequality: the source of income disparity can be abstracted as the factor of “effort ” and “luck”.By analyzing people’s fairness preferences in these two contexts,the following questions are studied:(1)Whether people support equality of opportunity in income distribution;(2)Whether people with different identity characteristics have this tendency(stakeholders,spectators,high-income earners and low-income earners).The experimental results show that:(1)the source of income difference has a significant impact on the fairness of people.In the context of luck,they are more willing to pursue fairness in results,but in the context of efforts,they are more willing to maintain this income difference.That is,on the issue of distribution,people tend to support equality of opportunities.(2)The source of income disparity has a significant impact on the fairness of spectators and stakeholders.Although stakeholders are more selfish compared to spectators,in the context of luck,they are more willing to pursue fair results,while in the effort context,they are more willing to maintain this income difference.That is,on the issue of distribution,they are more inclined to support equality of opportunities.(3)Similarly,in the context of luck,both high-income and low-income people are more willing to pursue fairness in results,and in the effort situation,they are more willing to maintain income disparity.That is,in terms of income distribution,they are also more inclined to support equality of opportunities.That is,the tendency does not change as individuals’ identity changes.The research results of this paper have certain reference value for the formulation of income distribution policy.Based on these results,this paper believes that the government should strive to create a more equitable external environment,and weaken the impact of the external environment on the income of residents.By improving the return of efforts everyone can achieve wealth through hard work.Specifically,there are the following measures and suggestions:(1)Accelerate the reform of the taxation system,including increasing the taxation of estate tax and gift tax,and appropriately reducing the tax rate of labor income such as wages and salaries;(2)Create an environment with equality of opportunity,including equalization of government education funding,speeding up the reform of the household registration system,eliminating urban and rural dual system barriers,improving government policies for equalization of opportunities in primary distribution,increasing anti-corruption efforts,and establishing a clean and honest system.