The Matthew Effect and Ethics

Abstract The unequal distribution of goods seems to be a permanent phenomenon both nationally and globally. Although the historical details of the roots of inequality may vary slightly from country to country, one of the main causes is the so‐called ‘Matthew effect’, which refers to the accumulation of advantages. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. In this paper, I argue that although the Matthew effect has a bad moral reputation, this effect is inherently neither bad nor good. I introduce four variants of the effect, which represent the most common usages of the term by researchers, and point out that they all have instances that are morally unproblematic. However, I also argue that, in many cases, there are convincing moral reasons to try to reduce the accumulation of advantages. The intuition that the Matthew effect is ethically problematic has good grounds in specific common cases. Therefore, I argue that the Matthew effect deserves its bad reputation.