Different Cohorts and Evaluation of Income Differences in Estonia (original) (raw)

The article addresses three main research questions. (1) What attitudes do people entertain in post-socialist Estonia with regard to income inequality? (2) Do the unique formative experiences of different birth cohorts become imprinted in values, making them distinctively different in their evaluations of income inequalities, or do people from different cohorts adapt to changes and are they becoming more similar? (3) Are there any differences in the impact of various individual-level characteristics on the attitudes to inequality of different cohorts? In order to answer these questions, this article compares five birth cohorts with different socialization experiences. The analysis is based on data from the International Social Justice Project of 1991 and 1996 and from the Estonian Social Justice Survey carried out in 2004. The analysis indicates a time-dependent and increasing effect of cohort on attitudes towards income inequality. The cohort effect on the perception and appraisal ...