Exploring Representations of Economic Inequality in three Welfare States: The Cases of France, Great Britain and Sweden

Previous empirical studies suggest that citizens’ presumed knowledge of economic inequality in their society may differ substantially from related objective measures of the income distribution. This discrepancy between objective facts and subjective assessments, which is usually associated with an underestimation of inequalities in income and wealth, is relevant since political attitudes, preferences and behavior are impacted by citizens’ perceptions of fairness in society. So far, very little is known about the root causes of this objective-subjective discrepancy and in particular about which shortcuts, heuristics and representations of inequality people use to construct a personal idea about the extent of economic inequality that they are exposed to at different levels of personal proximity (i.e., neighborhood, community, region, country). To address these shortcomings, our paper provides new empirical insights as it is based on recently collected online focus group discussion and survey data in three prototypically different welfare regimes that simultaneously exhibit different levels of economic inequalities. Our findings reveal commonalities and striking differences at the same time that might, indeed, in part be associated with the institutional settings and extent and immediacy of inequalities.