The goal of this project is to understand to what extent society perceives genetic inequalities to be fair and relevant for redistribution policies. Although the inheritance of genes is beyond an individual’s control, many people see compensation for innate differences as conflicting with the principle of self-ownership. Moreover, it has been shown that most people are not willing to compensate people for ‘efforts’ that are co-determined by ‘circumstances’.
This project has two strands. First, we will employ genetic characteristics alongside the traditional socioeconomic ones to obtain a cleaner empirical separation of effort and circumstances, thereby improving estimates of equality of opportunity.
Second, we will employ survey questionnaires and experiments to provide a comprehensive assessment of people’s fairness assessments with respect to genetic differences. By experimentally inducing variation in the information study participants have about the heritable nature of traits, we aim to charter a socially accepted level of heritability for life chances and support for redistributive policies that compensate for innate differences. The survey experiments will be executed in collaboration with UNIVBRIS.
This project is hosted at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 programme under grant agreement number 101073237
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