Mechanisms of Income Comparisons in Forming Subjective Social Unfairness: An Analysis of the Relative Deprivation Index

Abstract

Studies of subjective social unfairness, which form part of the field of class consciousness research, are based on a quantitative analysis using a large-scale data-set. At present, however, there is no attempt to clarify the mechanism on subjective social unfairness because of weak relation between subjective social unfairness and social stratification. In this paper, we apply the Relative Deprivation Index proposed by Yizhaki [1979] to reveal how income comparisons with others affect the formation of subjective social unfairness. Results show that the amount of personal income in and of itself has an influence on subjective social unfairness for males, whereas for females the Relative Deprivation Index in which a comparison is made with the household income of others from the same generation has a negative influence on subjective social unfairness.