CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Buchel, Ondrej |
|---|---|
| Title | Inequality Attitudes in Central European Countries: Changes in Normative Attitudes during Two Decades of Adaptation |
| Summary | Paper presents an overview and an analysis of changes in differences in attitudes towards economic inequality in the Visegrad countries and Slovenia. Data come from rounds 1992, 1999, and 2009 of International Social Survey Programme surveys on social inequality. Posed questions are relevant in debates on theories of social justice and attitude change in transitional societies. The dependent variable is the level of income inequality measured as a ratio of incomes of high-status occupations and low-status occupations. The first part of the analysis looks into differences in legitimate levels of income inequality between countries and across time. In the second part, determinants of attitudes towards inequality are tested through two methods. Multivariate OLS regressions are used to estimate effects at the individual level, and multi-level random effects model is used to estimate the influence of the national level characteristics. The multi-level model uses a constructed pseudo-panel dataset to accommodate for the lack of true panel data. The results show that, that differences between countries have grown and that studied countries followed different trajectories in regards to attitudes towards inequality. Formerly egalitarian nations have adapted their attitudes towards income disparities and started to accept higher levels of inequality as legitimate. Perceived and objective rate of inequality have the strongest effects out of the tested variables. Other factors, such as material self-interest and ideology, also report to have a measurable influence, though do not explain as much variance as the inequality ones. |
| Supervisor | Littvay, Levente |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/buchel_ondrej.pdf |
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