Abstract: How do Americans decide what is (or isn’t) fair? Drawing from a nationally-representative conjoint experiment with open-ended free text responses, this study illustrates the dimensions that inform normative judgments on how Americans prefer to distribute educational resources between two fictitious middle school students with varying characteristics. First, I find that people prioritize the lower performing student but do not adjust for differences in effort levels. Second, some – but not all – demographic characteristics influence allocation decisions: respondents allocate additional time to those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and to individuals with disabilities, in part because they perceive both structural disadvantage and potential for improvement for these groups. However, neither student gender nor race significantly affect allocations; results suggest that this is due in part to the fact that respondents (1) do not believe that either boys or girls have a relative advantage in educational contexts and (2) do not perceive racial differences in improvement potential (despite recognizing racial differences in experiences of educational disadvantage). Overall, I argue that Americans’ inequality preferences are informed by subjective cultural frameworks about which demographic groups are societally disadvantaged, how they came to be in this position, and what (if anything) can be done about it.
Marissa Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Broadly, her research focuses on the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic inequality. Her current work explores, for example, beliefs about fairness and inequality, the role of genetic ancestry tests in racial boundary-making processes, and the incomplete take-up of social safety net benefits. She uses a range of empirical approaches in her work, including quantitative methods, survey and audit experiments, and both computational and qualitative analyses of text data. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociological Science, and PNAS. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Stanford University and a B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania.