There’s a problem with the way we define inequality

There’s a problem with the way we define inequality We are failing to look at inequality in the right way, according to researchers who study people’s attitudes to wealth disparity. In a paper published in April in the journal Nature Human Behaviour called ‘Why people prefer unequal societies’, a team of researchers from Yale University argue that humans – even as young children and babies – actually prefer living in a world in which inequality exists. But this has led to an incorrect focus on wealth inequality itself as the problem that needs addressing, rather than the more central issue of fairness.” Starman’s co-author Mark Sheskin, a cognitive science post-doc at Yale, puts the findings of this research succinctly: “People typically prefer fair inequality to unfair equality”. Each of these ideas represent a different kind of inequality that manifests in everyday life and that contributes to the overarching mega-trend that many regular people think of as ‘economic inequality’.