Double Meritocratic Standards

This paper investigates whether in Germany and France double standards are used when compensating income inequalities due to differences in productivity. To do so, controlled experiments were conducted among general-population samples in which decision makers belonging to the majority group were confronted with an unequal distribution of income between two persons of which one belonged to the majority and the other to an ethnic minority group. One of these persons performed well in a productive task and the other performed poorly. On average, less money was redistributed from rich, well-performing majority to poor, poorly-performing minority persons than from rich, well-performing minority to poor, poorly-performing majority persons, providing evidence of a double meritocratic standard. The effect is driven by those decision makers who hold a negative attitude to ethnic diversity and vote for far-right political parties or not vote at all.