Collectivism Increases Income Inequality: Insights From A Mixed-Method Analysis

Authors:

Abstract: High income inequality has numerous negative consequences. As income inequality is relatively stable within countries but varies substantially across countries, it is likely that cultural values serve to perpetuate inequality. We trained a deep learning model to predict countries’ Gini indices from individuals’ values that were assessed in the World Values Survey; the model had high predictive accuracy in a holdout sample (r = .88). A feature importance analysis identified collectivism as one of the top predictors of higher inequality (Study 1). This finding is surprising given past research in social and cultural psychology. Indeed, a survey found that people expected collectivist countries to have lower inequality (Study 2). However, an incentive- compatible lab experiment using a public goods game provided causal support for the hypothesis generated from the machine learning model—groups ended up with more unequal income in the collectivist condition than in the individualist condition (Study 3).

Track: DEI

Keywords: individualism-collectivism; income inequality; public goods; machine learning