Westerners underestimate global inequality

Ziano, Ignazio; Onyeador, Ivuoma Ngozi; Dhanda, Nandita

doi:10.1017/jdm.2024.38

Scientific article

English

Westerners underestimate global inequality

Contributors

Ziano, Ignazio

; Onyeador, Ivuoma Ngozi; Dhanda, Nandita

Published in

Judgment and decision making, vol. 19, p. 19

Publication date

2024

First online date

2024-12-19

Abstract

Most global inequality is between countries, but inequality perceptions have mostly been investigated within the country. Six studies (total N = 2656, 5 preregistered, 1 incentivized for accuracy, 1 with a sample representative of the USA) show that Westerners (U.S. American, British, and French participants) believe that developing and middle-income countries’ GDP per capita is much closer to developed countries’ than it actually is, and that people in developing and middle-income countries have higher rates of car ownership, larger houses, and eat out more frequently than they actually do, meaning that Westerners underestimate global inequality. This misperception is underpinned by a convergence illusion: the belief that over time, poorer countries have closed the economic gap with richer countries to a larger extent than they have. Further, overestimating GDP per capita is negatively correlated with support for aid to the target country and positively correlated with a country’s perceived military threat. We discuss implications for inequality perceptions and for global economic justice.

Keywords

Global inequality
Perceptions of inequality
Economic inequality

UNIGE affiliation entities

Faculté d'économie et de management / Institute of Management

Citation (ISO format)

ZIANO, Ignazio, ONYEADOR, Ivuoma Ngozi, DHANDA, Nandita. Westerners underestimate global inequality. In: Judgment and decision making, 2024, vol. 19, p. 19. doi: 10.1017/jdm.2024.38

Article (Published version)

CC BY-4.0

Identifiers

PID : unige:193151
DOI : 10.1017/jdm.2024.38

Additional URL for this publication

https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S193029752400038X/type/journal_article

Journal ISSN

1930-2975

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24/04/2026 14:09:14

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28/04/2026 09:13:32

Westerners underestimate global inequality

Contributors

Published in

Publication date

First online date

Abstract

Keywords

UNIGE affiliation entities

Citation (ISO format)

Main files (1)

Identifiers

Additional URL for this publication

Journal ISSN

Technical informations

Creation

First validation

Update

Status update

Last indexation