Attitudes Toward Income Inequality in France:

These seminar notes report preliminary findings from a survey run in July 1998 in France on individual attitudes toward income inequality. The main finding is that people simply do not seem to disagree very much about the ideal pay scale and income ratios across individuals. Low-income individuals, as well as left-wing voters, do indeed tend to favor a more compressed income distribution than high-income individuals and right-wing supporters, but the point is that these disagreements are quantitatively very small. In particular, people seem to disagree much more about issues such as the death penalty, foreigners, the rôle of women, etc., than about income inequality.