Fundamental and Gender-Based Wealth Inequalities

There is much to gain by jointly considering multiple group-based inequalities and changestherein. Here, we present two survey studies (Study 1 N = 979, Study 2 N = 994) on wealthinequalities between men and women (gender inequality) and between the wealthier and lesswealthy half (fundamental inequality) in Switzerland. The findings concern what inequalitiespeople perceive, what changes they desire, and how they think society should allocateresources to realize their individually desired changes. Despite people typically perceivinggreater fundamental inequality, fundamental inequality was more commonly met withindifference compared to gender inequality, even from people from the less wealthy half.Further, people’s preferences for how resources should be allocated to realize the changes theyindividually desired did not reflect how big the desired changes were relative to one another andthereby how much wealth would have minimally been required to realize both changes. We callfor research on the alignment of the changes that people desire and how they think resourcesshould be allocated to realize these changes.