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Different Cohorts and Evaluation of Income Differences in Estonia

Tallinn University, saar{at}iiss.ee

The article addresses three main research questions. (1) What attitudes do people entertain in post-socialist Estonia with regard to income inequality? (2) Do the unique formative experiences of different birth cohorts become imprinted in values, making them distinctively different in their evaluations of income inequalities, or do people from different cohorts adapt to changes and are they becoming more similar? (3) Are there any differences in the impact of various individual-level characteristics on the attitudes to inequality of different cohorts? In order to answer these questions, this article compares five birth cohorts with different socialization experiences. The analysis is based on data from the International Social Justice Project of 1991 and 1996 and from the Estonian Social Justice Survey carried out in 2004. The analysis indicates a time-dependent and increasing effect of cohort on attitudes towards income inequality. The cohort effect on the perception and appraisal of income inequality in Estonian society is opposite to previous findings for western welfare regimes, where young people look more critically at income inequality. There are clear indications that the older cohorts in Estonia are more critical concerning income inequality and that these cohort-specific differences cannot be attributed only to the heterogeneous self-interests of individuals belonging to different cohorts. Controlling for effects of self-interest does not considerably reduce the influence of cohort on evaluation of income inequality. Our analysis indicates that the most important mediator of the effect of cohort were justice beliefs.

Key Words: birth cohorts • evaluation of income inequality • justice beliefs • self-interest • transformation of post-socialist society

International Sociology, Vol. 23, No. 3, 417-445 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0268580908088899


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