Mind the economy

A global geography of justice

Not everything we achieve in life is the result of our own efforts. The lottery of genes that assigns us unchosen parents, the lottery of birth that places us in one family rather than another, health, chance encounters, historical moment, place, all weigh in our existential paths, often more than our decisions. Yet, we continue to live under the illusion that it is possible to draw a clear line between merit and fate

7 September 2025

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Not everything we achieve in life is the result of our own efforts. The lottery of genes that assigns us unchosen parents, the lottery of birth that places us in one family rather than another, health, chance encounters, historical moment, place, all weigh in our existential paths, often more than our decisions. Yet, we continue to live under the illusion that it is possible to draw a clear line between merit and fate. The point is not only philosophical, but has profound economic and political implications. For if differences in income and wealth arise from ability and commitment, many will find them acceptable. If, on the other hand, they are the product of fate, an innate sense of justice prompts us to say that something is wrong. But this distinction, which seems obvious to us, is neither universal nor stable. It changes over time, in places, in political systems. And with it also changes the legitimacy of institutions and the redistributive policies they are called upon to implement.

Justice as a social construction

There is no 'pure' conception of justice, given once and for all. Societies construct shared narratives about what is just and what is not. Meritocracy, which today seems natural to many European citizens, is actually a historically situated vision: it has its roots in the liberal tradition and Enlightenment thought, was consolidated with the twentieth-century welfare state, and continues to be negotiated in the conflict between economic efficiency and distributive fairness. In other cultures and historical contexts, other values have been dominant. The communitarian logic of egalitarianism, for example, survives in rural subsistence economies and resurfaces today in claims against the new global inequalities. The libertarian vision, which accepts that it is chance and the logic of competition and the market that decides, finds room in contexts marked by a strong distrust of state intervention and widespread individualism.

Mapping these visions of society, as we said, is not a sterile philosophical exercise, but a necessary condition for understanding the geography of global justice in order to be able to design public policies capable of gaining the consensus of citizens and operating effectively towards the goals they set. Because a certain tax regime, a given welfare architecture, a particular redistributive policy cannot live by numbers and tables; they need social legitimacy and electoral consensus.

When merit meets fortune

The line between merit and luck is more blurred than we think. Talent itself, a component, together with commitment, of what we generally understand as 'merit', is a gift. We do not choose it, we inherit it. But even the conditions that enable us to develop it, that give us the drive to try harder - school, family, social networks - are not entirely up to us. "If the results of both [genetic and social] lotteries are taken into account, the remaining unpredictability in psychological traits and socio-economic positions is really small. Once the powerful effects of luck (both environmental and genetic) are taken into account, there is little room left for 'personal responsibility'. So writes geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden in her recent The Gene Lottery. How DNA influences our lives and society (UTET, 2022). Yet, our common sense still turns us off to holding people fully responsible, almost exclusively responsible, for their successes and failures.

This fact creates a constant tension in modern societies: on the one hand the celebration of the self-made man, the self-made man, who did not need anyone else to emerge - note the characteristics 'man' and 'alone' - and on the other hand the growing realisation that the opportunities that life and society offers to different people can also be radically different. No wonder the political debate constantly oscillates between two poles: that of those who call for more redistribution in the name of equality and that of those who oppose it in order to defend the meritocratic principle.

Inequality Tolerance and Redistributive Policies

What are the boundaries of this debate? And what are the roots? Is it possible to construct a geography of justice? This is the question Ingvild Almås, Alexander Cappelen, Erik Ø. Sørensen and Bertil Tungodden, economists at the Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality (FAIR) at the University of Bergen in a monumental work - 'Fairness Across the World' - that has just been released as a working paper by the Norwegian School of Economics. For the first time, a team of economists collected data on over 65,000 individuals in 60 countries, covering more than three quarters of the world's population. At the heart of the project is a small, simple but ingenious behavioural experiment. Participants were presented with a concrete situation: two real people were given the opportunity to earn a certain amount of money by doing a small amount of work on an online platform. The workers earn a small, equal sum for both of them plus a bonus of $6. The bonus is awarded according to two different criteria: merit and luck. In the first case, it is awarded to the most productive worker, in the second case, the bonus is awarded randomly. The experiment involves three different treatments. The 'luck' treatment measures tolerance for inequality by participants playing the role of 'spectators' when earnings are determined randomly; the 'merit' treatment measures it when earnings are determined by worker productivity; and the 'efficiency' treatment tests how spectators balance equity and efficiency when earnings are determined randomly and there is a cost associated with redistribution. Each participant is randomly assigned to one of the treatments and makes a spectator decision for a unique pair of workers. Specifically, in the 'luck' treatment, which serves as the basic treatment, spectators are informed that earnings are determined randomly. Viewers can choose to redistribute nothing ($6, $0), redistribute in part ($4.5, $1.5) or equalise earnings ($3, $3). The 'merit' treatment is identical to the 'luck' treatment, except for the source of the inequality: the allocation of earnings is determined by the productivity of the workers rather than luck, with the most productive worker in the pair earning $6, as we said, and the least productive worker earning nothing. The 'efficiency' treatment is identical to the 'luck' treatment in terms of the source of inequality, but introduces a 50 per cent redistribution cost: the spectator can choose between the following three income distributions: ($6, $0), ($3.6, $1.2) and ($2, $2). The idea here is to simulate the actual cost of a redistributive system such as that associated with the existence of an inefficient welfare state.

After the pair of workers have performed their task, a certain distribution of income is generated, one of them having earned more than the other. The 'spectator' participant is then asked to decide whether to leave things as they are, respecting the initial distribution, or to redistribute some of the earnings to reduce the gap between the two. The key to the study lies in the way the difference is generated. And the spectator is called upon to express his or her willingness or otherwise to remedy, through redistribution, that inequality

Meritocracy, equality, freedom: a global look

The three possible choices offered to viewers represent three different ideals of justice. The first is 'egalitarianism' which stipulates that workers receive the same income regardless of their earnings. The second is 'meritocracy', which stipulates that the more productive worker receives a higher income than the less productive worker, while considering any inequality due to luck to be unfair. Ifine there is 'libertarianism' according to which it is fair that workers receive what luck or productivity, indifferently, has determined.

The picture that emerges from the survey is surprisingly diverse. Globally, about 50 per cent of the participants lean towards meritocracy: inequalities are fair when they are based on effort. A substantial proportion, around 30 per cent, shows a preference for radical egalitarianism: differences should always be corrected, regardless of their causes. Finally, just under 20 per cent lean towards a libertarian view, according to which inequalities are acceptable always and in any case, even when they depend on chance. When inequalities derive from merit, viewers become much more forgiving: the average level of inequality that emerges from viewers' choices is almost double that of the scenario in which differences depend on luck (0.678 versus 0.366 measured by the Gini index). It means, in other words, an 85 per cent increase in tolerance towards inequalities if these have a meritocratic justification. Sensitivity to efficiency, on the other hand, is surprisingly weak. Introducing a 50 per cent cost in redistribution increases average inequality by only 14 per cent (from 0.366 to 0.417). In other words, the majority of participants seem willing to sacrifice some resources - to accept an inefficient welfare state - in order to correct inequalities they consider unfair.

These global averages conceal strong regional differences. In Northern Europe and North America the absolute majority are meritocrats (over 60 per cent). In China and parts of East Asia, the share of those who accept inequalities also resulting from luck rises to 35-40 per cent, much more than elsewhere. In some African and Latin American countries, by contrast, egalitarianism prevails, with percentages exceeding 45 per cent.

In Scandinavian countries, a strong rejection of inequality due to luck prevails. If two people get different results just by chance, the Norwegians tend to redistribute a lot, reducing inequality almost to zero. This sensitivity is explained by a long tradition of universal welfare and a strong ethos of equality, which has deep cultural and political roots.

China is at the opposite extreme: it is the country where luck weighs less heavily in redistributive decisions. Even when inequality is clearly due to luck, the Chinese show a higher tolerance for inequality. Some scholars speculate that this reflects both a less democratic political environment and a collectivist culture where state intervention is already perceived as strong, reducing the individual drive to correct injustice.

The United States is a paradigmatic case: when inequality stems from merit, US citizens are well disposed to accept it. Not surprising, given the entrenchment of meritocratic ideology and the American Dream. Conversely, when differences are attributed to luck, Americans also become more egalitarian, but to a lesser extent than Northern Europeans.

Low-income countries are a different matter. In many African and South American societies, a greater propensity for equality tout court emerges, regardless of the cause that generated the inequality. Here, scarcity of resources, community networks and less trust in formal institutions lead to a preference for redistribution as a form of mutual support.

The data highlights a further food for thought. When participants are asked which factor matters most 'in real life', the prevailing global answer is 'luck'. In other words, even those who accept the meritocratic principle recognise that opportunities and success are generally associated with luck rather than commitment.

A challenge for democracy

The geography of justice that emerges from this study is not only crucial in explaining important cultural differences, but is also a necessary element in understanding the political consensus that different redistributive policies enjoy in different societies.

The work of Almås and colleagues delivers a crucial lesson: economic policies do not live in a vacuum, but within the moral frameworks that communities create and share. A progressive tax system may seem fair in Norway but unjustifiable in China. A transfer programme may strengthen social cohesion in sub-Saharan African countries but be perceived as oppressive in the United States. The same policies, in short, live or die depending on the legitimacy they receive from the cultural context in which they are embedded. That is why it is not enough to focus on the efficiency of redistributive measures in order to hope that they will be transposed and implemented. We need to understand whether those same policies resonate with the common sense of justice. Not with what is right or wrong, but with what people in that place and at that moment in history believe is right or wrong. This is where the real economic policy game is played.

In a world of growing inequalities, the ability to hold merit and luck together becomes decisive. Not to discourage commitment without, at the same time, denying the weight of luck to protect those who already start at a disadvantage, that is the challenge. Because, in the final analysis, what makes a society cohesive is not so much its overall wealth, but the widespread conviction that the rules of the game are fair.

Our tolerance of inequality depends more on 'why' than 'how much'. On what has generated it rather than the cost of counteracting it. Meritocracy functions as a powerful 'moral excuse' that makes differences more acceptable. Inefficiencies, on the other hand, count for much less in individual evaluations. For politics, this means that debates on redistribution should not only be played out on the arithmetic of costs and benefits, but above all on the narrative of the origins of wealth. The ideals of justice are not an appendage of economic policy, but its invisible infrastructure. Stressing the role of fate in the creation of inequality can increase support for redistributive policies. Conversely, spreading the perception that differences reflect individual merit, as we increasingly observe in Western countries, can make even the most unequal systems appear legitimate and even just.