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How do people view and justify inequalities in society?

A project led by Simone M. Schneider, a professor with the Department of Political and Social Sciences at UPF, funded by an ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million euros, analyses the impact of public institutions on social perceptions and the formation of preferences.

15.12.2022

Imatge inicial

Increasing economic inequality in countries around the world is causing social and political concern, and with the covid-19 pandemic, this debate has taken on a new significance. But, the way in which people perceive and respond to inequalities varies between societies and social groups.

A project led by Simone M. Schneider, a professor at the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences, which she recently joined, aims to advance knowledge of the social causes that lead to the perception of economic inequality, an area that has been little explored to date.

Entitled “The (Mis)Perception of Economic Inequality: The Impact of Welfare State Institutions on Social Perception and Preference Formation (PERGAP)”, the project began on 1 December 2022 and will run for five years. It is funded by an ERC Starting Grant, endowed with some 1.5 million euros, under the 2021 call by the European Research Council, and will be conducted in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich (Germany).

"My research will lead to a comprehensive theoretical and empirical understanding of the impact of public institutions on perceptions regarding inequality, distributive justice, and the formation of preferences”

The researcher, as a basic assumption, proposes that “the different countries’ social security systems provide different answers to the questions “who receives what and why?”, and “who should get what and why?”, which ultimately shape the way citizens see and justify the existing inequalities in society”, she explains. And she adds: “My research will lead to a comprehensive theoretical and empirical understanding of the impact of public institutions on perceptions regarding inequality, distributive justice, and the formation of preferences”.

A single set of comparative data pertaining to 50 countries

PERGAP will develop new tools for the evaluation and comparison of the institutional structure of welfare states and study their impact on the processes of perception and justification at three points in time and in different structural and cultural contexts.

The project will create a single set of comparative data pertaining to some fifty European and non-European countries on institutional disparities, and will expand the knowledge of the mechanisms of (self-)legitimization of public institutions.

To do so, Simone M. Schneider will collect legal information on the institutional imprints of existing social differences in the various areas that make up the social security systems of the countries analysed: medical care, pensions, unemployment benefit, minimum safeguards, etc., and will combine this information with data from comparative surveys, such as the European Social Survey (ESS) and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP).

"I will use questions that allow us to assess the public’s perception of how economic resources are distributed among society and to what extent these distributional processes and results are considered fair"

“The project will make use of interesting survey questions incorporated into prestigious international comparative survey studies. The most relevant are questions that allow us to assess the public’s perception of how economic resources are distributed among society and to what extent these distributional processes and results are considered fair. I argue that these perceptions and preferences are shaped by social welfare institutions and how these institutions distribute resources and guarantee equal social rights”.

A social scientist who wants to understand the legitimization of inequality

Simone M. Schneider

Simone M. Schneider has joined Pompeu Fabra University from the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich, Germany, to which she was linked when she applied for and obtained the European Research Council grant.

Her field of work lies at the intersection of comparative social policy, political sociology and social psychology, and she is especially interested in the legitimization and reproduction of social inequality.

Some of her research goals are to better understand how individuals perceive and legitimize the inequalities and the social policies related to them, how perceptions and patterns of justification are shaped by the socio-political context, and how individuals respond emotionally and behaviourally to them.

In addition to her research work, at Pompeu Fabra University (which she has joined as a tenure track assistant professor) she will teach courses on social policy and welfare state, for the university research master’s degree in Demography and Sociology, and in the Erasmus Mundus European Politics and Society programme.

Professor Schneider said that “the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences, which comprises academics and research groups from the different fields of the social sciences, provides a fantastic research environment to carry out this interdisciplinary project. I am sure that PERGAP will greatly benefit from the extensive experience and expertise of this department and will also offer opportunities for collaboration within. I am very excited to be here and I am looking forward to embarking on this new challenge”.

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10. Reduced inequalities
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