Introduction

We have seen that the thinking about inequality practised by the economics profession may differ significantly from the thinking about inequality that is practised by others. But we might wonder whether there are substantial differences amongst people on this subject according to some criterion other than whether or not they are professional economists. For this reason it is appropriate to look at some aspects of the structure of the responses in the questionnaire-experiment studies that we have been discussing in chapters 4 to 7. As the title suggests, this is a more specialised chapter and can be skipped without loss of continuity of the argument in the rest of the book.

What do we mean by the grand term ‘cross-cultural perspective’? This is just a shorthand for a systematic approach to the interpersonal and intergroup differences underlying our questionnaire-experiment programme. Obviously views about the meaning of inequality will differ according to the type of person, as will views about most things, but in addressing the question ‘What determines attitudes to inequality?’ it is not obvious what sort of determinants it would be reasonable to specify.