Silver Spoons and Scales of Justice: The Fairness Preference over Unequal Intergenerational Wealth Transfers

Intergenerational transfers are widespread and significantly unequal. This study explores people’s fairness preferences regarding inequality caused by wealth transfers from economically advantaged parents through a large-scale experiment. In the experiment, workers and their parents completed assignments. Workers’ earnings were derived either from their own merit or luck, or from wealth transferred by their parents, also earned via merit or luck. Impartial spectators from the U.S. and China then made real distributive decisions. Our results indicate a pronounced aversion among Americans to inequalities stemming from intergenerational transfers compared with those from self-earned wealth. In contrast, the Chinese exhibited only a mild aversion. Moreover, Americans showed a preference for intergenerational meritocracy, more accepting inequalities in transferred wealth when it resulted from parental merit rather than parental luck—a preference not shared by the Chinese. Further experiments suggest that attitudes toward unequal intergenerational wealth transfers are primarily driven by whether parents possess wealth to transfer rather than the choice to transfer it