Distribution of income and job opportunities: Normative judgements from four continents

How do people define distributional justice? What are the personal characteristics or situations that influence how people define distributional justice? Leaving aside the values assumed by policy-makers and experts, the authors analyse PSS respondents' preferences as between the distributional principles of need, equality and equity. In particular, they investigate the preferences of different demographic groups and empirically verify the previously observed pattern of consensus on need as a distributional principle combined with dissensus on the acceptability of inequality. They also examine whether people of lower socio-economic status favor distributional rules that would mitigate their position, including support for positive discrimination in labour markets. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]