How do people causally explain economic differences between countries? Development and validation of the Cross-Country Inequality Attributions Scale

Economic differences between poor and rich countries result in greatly unequal living conditions. Nevertheless, even though inequality is detrimental to most societies, people still tolerate it. One way to understand why some people legitimize inequality is to comprehend the lay causal explanations they have for its existence. Across two studies conducted in three countries, we investigated the causal attributions people use to explain cross-country economic inequality and their relationships with beliefs about inequality, international redistribution, and work migration. In Study 1 (Italy n = 246; UK n = 248; South Africa n = 228) we identified three ways through which people causally explain inequality through a newly developed Cross-Country Inequality Attribution Scale: blaming the exploitation by and systematic advantage of rich countries, blaming the inherent characteristics of poor countries, and blaming luck and fate. In Study 2 (Italy n = 239; UK n = 249; South Africa n = 248), we confirmed the observed measurement model and evaluated its metric invariance across countries. In both studies, blaming rich countries was positively linked to support for redistribution and negatively to perceiving that inequality is fair and morally acceptable, while the opposite was true for blaming poor countries. Results for blaming fate were instead mixed. Overall, the findings suggest causal attributions play a role in explaining why people sustain inequality even between countries.