Distributive Justice in Society and among Peers: 8- to 14-Year-Olds' Views on Economic Stratification Inform Their Decisions about Access to Opportunities

This study examined how children's and adolescents' beliefs about the distribution of wealth in society and the fairness of economic systems informed their behavior, judgments, and reasoning about access to opportunities among peers. The sample included 136 8- to 14-year-olds (47% girls, 60% White, majority middle- to higher-socioeconomic status [SES]) in the United States. Relative to older children, early adolescents viewed economic systems as less fair and wealth as less equally distributed, but still underestimated the true magnitude of existing economic disparities. Importantly, the stronger their system justification beliefs the "fewer" opportunities participants directed to poor peers over rich peers in an allocation scenario, but the more equally participants believed that wealth should be distributed in society the "more" opportunities they directed to poor peers. Moreover, participants were more supportive of allocating opportunities to poor peers when they had direct evidence that poor peers had been excluded in the past, and 40% reasoned explicitly about the implications of economic inequality when making their decision. Finally, exploratory associations of family SES and beliefs about distributive justice suggested that experiencing greater economic security may have enabled some participants to more readily critique societal inequality. Together, these findings provide correlational, experimental, and cross-sectional developmental evidence that older children's and early adolescents' beliefs about distributive justice in society inform their decisions about how to address disparities within their sphere of influence.