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PERGAP

The (Mis)Perception of Economic Inequality: The Impact of Welfare State Institutions on Social Perception and Preference Formation
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PERGAP aims to advance knowledge on the socio-political forces that shape misperceptions of economic inequalities by developing novel instruments for the assessment of inequality enshrined in social security systems and studying its impact on the perceptions of inequality and justice.

ABOUT

PERGAP is a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union´s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (ERC Starting Grant 2021). It is implemented by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, led by Dr. Simone M. Schneider.

PERGAP asks the following key questions:

  • How do social security systems differ in their conceptions of economic inequality? How can we assess and quantify these differences empirically?
  • Do perceptions of inequality and justice vary systematically between societies and social groups within society? Can institutional differences explain these systematic differences in social perceptions?

Why individuals across societies and social groups perceive and respond to inequalities differently is still underexplored. We propose that social security systems provide specific answers to the questions of ‘who gets what and why?’ and ‘who should get what and why?’, ultimately shaping how citizens view and justify inequalities. We develop new measurement instruments for welfare state institutions and provide a country-comparative dataset on these ‘institutional imprints of social inequalities’ to empirically analyse and better understand how welfare state institutions shape people’s social perception and influence their preference formation.

OBJECTIVES

PERGAP will advance knowledge on the societal causes leading to the (mis)perception of economic inequality by:

  • Developing new instruments for the assessment and comparison of the institutional structure of social security systems.
  • Investigating their impact on the perception and justification of economic inequality – before, during, and potentially after the pandemic and across different structural and cultural settings.

BACKGROUND

The rise of income inequality observed in countries around the globe is causing societal and political concern, triggering public and academic debates on the consequences for societal welfare and social cohesion and fostering political discussions of the role of government intervention, the state’s inability to intervene, and the legitimacy of social policies. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, these debates have taken on new significance. These developments put the spotlight on the public’s perception of inequality and justice.

TERM DEFINITIONS

Institutional Imprints of Social Inequality

It is well established that the redistribution of economic resources is directly tied to the welfare state and its institutional arrangements. But welfare states can also act as stratifying agents. As such, welfare states do not only protect us from social risks, they can also manifest and enshrine social inequalities in society. PERGAP adopts a social rights perspective and studies ‘institutional imprints of social inequality’, i.e., gradual differences in the level of institutional fragmentation related to distributive outcomes and principles depicted in the legal foundations of four fields of social security: old age security, healthcare, unemployment and minimum protection.

(Mis)Perception of Economic Inequality
The ‘(mis)perception of economic inequality’ is used as an umbrella term for social cognitions often related to income disparities. It embraces:

  • Cognitive representations of distributive outcomes & principles.
  • Normative conceptions of the ‘right’ or ‘just’ distributive outcomes & principles.
  • Beliefs on the societal order that serve as cognitive scripts for the selection, perception and interpretation of relevant information.
  • Other-related as well as self-related perceptions related to inequality and justice.

PERGAP proposes that social cognitions are potentially related to the institutional context and can inform future research on emotional and behavioural responses towards inequalities and government intervention.

PROPOSED IDEAS

PERGAP proposes that:

  • Ideas about inequality are imprinted in the institutional setting of social security systems.
  • Researching these institutional imprints of social disparities requires a more sophisticated measurement of welfare state institutions.
  • Institutions shape the public’s perception and justification of economic inequality.

RESEARCH APPROACH

First, we examine the institutional structures of social security systems with respect to their conception of inequality and (re)distributive motives. By collecting, systematising, and quantifying legal information on the institutional framework provided by country experts, we develop novel indicators for the quantitative study of social security systems and their potential consequences.

Second, by combining these indicators with existing country-comparative survey data, such as the European Social Survey (ESS) and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), we can use quantitative research methods to study how the different institutional structures of welfare states are interrelated with the perception and justification of socio-economic inequality within and across countries.

Third, we explore how persons living in diverse institutional settings around the globe perceive and justify socio-economic inequalities. By studying perceptions over time, we also consider how changes in the institutional setting before, during, and potentially after the pandemic have changed the misperception of inequality.

OUTPUTS

Developing a unique country-comparative dataset on ‘institutional imprints of social disparities’.

  • Devise a conceptual framework on ‘institutional imprints of social disparities’ in social security systems, specifically old-age security, healthcare, unemployment and minimum protection.
  • Collect ‘de jure’ information on social security systems around the globe from country experts.
  • Create new measurement instruments for the empirical assessment of ‘institutional imprints of social disparities’ for quantitative inequality research.

Creating knowledge on the contextual forces that shape people’s misperceptions of inequality and justice within a cross-country comparative research framework.

  • Examine systematic differences in the misperception of inequality and justice between societies and social groups within societies using country-comparative survey data.
  • Examine socio-political factors that explain these systematic perceptual differences across contexts and over time by combining country-comparative survey data with newly generated country-level indicators.

IMPACT

PERGAP will advance our understanding of the impact of public institutions on social perception and preference formation. This has important implications for scientists and non-scientists alike:

  • PERGAP will add to institutionalist scholarship. By conceptualising and systematising legal information on the reproduction of social inequality in the different fields of social protection, PERGAP represents a pioneering endeavour in welfare state research. The quantification of legal information will advance comparative research on social policy and provide novel instruments that can be used by other scholars to explain the origins and consequences of different policy designs in a country-comparative framework.
  • Understanding how institutional structures interact with principles of human cognition will produce new knowledge of the contextual ‘conditions’ in which inequality perceptions and justification processes arise and potentially provoke emotional and behavioural responses. This will allow us to make predictions of political behaviour, the self-legitimising mechanisms of public institutions and the stability of political systems.
  • By comparing perceptions and justifications of inequalities before, during, and after the pandemic, PERGAP will generate new knowledge, applicable beyond the pandemic. This external shock impacted our daily lives and has raised awareness of social risks and unequal opportunities, the distribution of scarce resources, and solidarity. As such, it may have opened an arena for political and societal discourse on the ‘public good’ and societal welfare.

Funded by the European Research Council

ERC-2021-STG – ERC Starting Grant
01 December 2022 – 30 November 2027
Overall budget Euro 1.495.528

Implemented by UPF and MPISOC

 

The project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (Grant agreement no. 101042125). Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.