Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2016, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (4): 133-156.

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Perception of Income Fairness:A Sociological New Institutionalist Explanation

LIU Xin, HU Anning   

  1. Department of Sociology, Fudan University
  • Online:2016-07-20 Published:2016-07-20
  • Supported by:

    This study is funded by Philosophy and Social Sciences Research Fund for Key Projects of Ministry of Education “A Research of Social Stratification in Contemporary China”(08JZD0024).

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Abstract:

Drawing on the concepts of embeddedness and legitimacy, this study fuses the two theories of primary ideology and self-evaluation on social justice to suggest a new institutionalist explanation of distributive fairness. We argue that people's belief of income fairness is decided by whether one's subjective socioeconomic status agrees with the social consensus. If the self-perceived status is lower than what is by the social consensus, one is likely to feel income unfairness. If the perception is consistent with, or even amounts to a higher status than what is by the social consensus, then one tends to believe income fairness. In other words, people whose subjective socioeconomic status is lower than their occupational prestige are more likely to see their income as unfair than people who have the two harmonized. The results of statistical analysis of the CGSS2006 strongly support our argument. It shows that the proposed theoretical explanation does a better job than the self-interest rational choice theory to explain why people, especially low socioeconomic status members, still view their income to be fair.

Key words: income fairness, subjective socioeconomic status, sociological new institutionalism, occupational prestige