The effect of economic inequality on young children's prosocial decision‐making

Abstract

An emerging body of literature has documented the negative implications high economic inequality can have on children's social and cognitive development. However, little experimental research has directly addressed how wealth discrepancies impact the way children treat others. The current study thus aimed to address the implications of economic inequality on prosocial decision-making in children prior to commencing formal schooling. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we immersed 4-year-old children (N = 58) in a series of games where they played against puppets for rewards. During this process, children were exposed to resource allocations featuring either high inequality or low inequality. We subsequently measured children's donation behaviour, resource division behaviour, and fairness perceptions. As predicted, children were less altruistic when exposed to high inequality compared to low inequality. Contrary to predictions, there was no difference in resource division behaviour or fairness perceptions. This study documents for the first time that exposure to environmental inequality, even if brief and in a controlled experimental setting, can influence young children's prosocial decisionmaking. Statement of contribution What is already known on the subject? Adults tend to be less prosocial towards others after experiencing high economic inequality. Young children understand when outcomes are unequal. Young children also have a rudimentary understanding of what is fair. What does this study adds? A novel experimental design was utilized to immerse children in a safe experimental economy. Pre-schoolers are less altruistic after experiencing high inequality compared to low inequality. Children did not attempt to adjust prior inequalities in their resource division behaviour.

The effect of economic inequality on children's prosocial behaviour

“…Alternatively, the effect of inequality may not have extended to external prosocial giving (i.e., in the donation task) as children's personal standing was not clearly affected in this task. Additionally, it is noteworthy that children gave away more than half of their stickers, and this finding is contrary to prior literature demonstrating lower rates of altruism in pre-schoolers when there is a high cost (Green et al, 2018;Kirkland et al, 2020). These results…”

“…As with Experiment 1, children were randomly assigned to be either a (1) high earner or (2) low earner (see Figure 3.6). Across both conditions, children experienced identical levels of low inequality in the outcomes of the puppets, and this token distribution was closely matched to prior research with a similar design (Kirkland et al, 2020). However, children's position was either high or low.…”

“…Sixty children (32 female, MAge = 58.23 months, SDAge = 8.48 months) were included in the final sample. The aim was to test a minimum number of participants that were comparable to prior studies with related designs, i.e., 25-30 children per cell (Kirkland et al, 2020;Pappert et al, 2017), and testing ceased when the participant pool had been exhausted. Data was not examined until the final sample was obtained.…”

“…As mentioned, young children tend to divide resources equally (Kirkland et al, 2020;. However, when equal outcomes are no longer an option, children behave meritocratically (Baumard et al, 2012), and divide resources based on who they believe is the most deserving.…”

“…However, such comparison creates an unavoidable confound; children's position relative to others (e.g., whether they place first, second, third etc) changes as the degree of inequality changes. That is, the low inequality environment as created by Kirkland et al (2020) places puppets as middle earners. In this relatively equal environment, a high earner would possess more than the others by a significant degree and a low earner would possess substantially less than others.…”