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Getting Ahead through Our Own Efforts: Public Attitudes towards the Deservingness of the Rich in New Zealand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

PETER SKILLING  and
JESSICA McLAY
PETER SKILLING
Affiliation:
Faculty of Business and Law, Auckland University of Technology email: peter.skilling@aut.ac.nz
JESSICA McLAY
Affiliation:
Department of Statistics, University of Auckland email: jessica.mclay@auckland.ac.nz
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Abstract

The high level of academic, public and policy attention paid to the deservingness of the poor and (especially) of welfare recipients contrasts with the scant attention paid to the deservingness – or otherwise – of the rich. This discrepancy reflects socially dominant – but contestable – ideas about equality of opportunity and the role of individual merit within market systems. In this journal, Karen Rowlingson, Stewart Connor and Michael Orton have noted that wealth and riches have remained invisible as policy ‘problems’. This invisibility is socially important, in that policy efforts to address current, socially damaging, levels of economic inequality require attention to the deservingness of the rich, as well as of the poor. This article draws on recent survey data from New Zealand to provide new insights into public attitudes to the rich. It finds that the New Zealand public view the rich as more individually deserving of their outcomes than the poor are deserving of social assistance, and that attitudes towards the rich are related to redistributive sentiments at least as strongly as attitudes towards the poor. In concluding, the article reflects on the limitations of existing data sources and makes suggestions for future research.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 147 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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