Discontent people in post-communist countries: Income fairness perceptions across Europe

In Europe, we have witnessed various changes in the society over the last few decades, such as economic, political or social changes (democratic transformation of eastern countries, economic crisis in 2008, globalization and technological transformation, population aging, immigration, changes in family patterns). Moreover, the European society has also witnessed an unprecedented increase in economic inequality and its impact on the society as a whole. Inequality is a crucial issue in understanding the values and behavior of society, one of the possibilities to understand inequality is through the measure of perceived income fairness that helps explain among other job satisfaction, well-being, health, perceived justice, life satisfaction and other areas of individual. Perceived income fairness varies greatly not only within countries but more interestingly also across countries and cultures. This paper looks closely into the perceived income fairness in the European Social Survey special module on justice and fairness which was conducted in 2018. The ESS Round 9 offers a unique opportunity to study income fairness perceptions as this area of research is usually overlooked in international comparative surveys even though the topic of income fairness is more and more important in today’s world of increasing inequalities. This paper looks into the issue of perceived income fairness in different countries in Europe and aims to explain the striking differences in perceived income fairness between post-communist countries and the rest of Europe. The paper employs multilevel modelling in order to analyze cross and within country differences in income fairness perceptions and looks into different micro and macro variables influencing income fairness perception at the individual level. The findings suggest that in addition to micro effects, such as gender, educational level, life satisfaction, trust, perceived justice and others, there is a very important difference across countries at the macro level. The differences are especially striking between the two regions - post-communist countries and the rest of Europe, such differences are not explained solely by macro level indicators such as GDP or Gini, but there is a role of individual satisfaction involved. The findings suggest that there is a grave issue with perceived income fairness in post-communist countries that might have serious implications on country level economy and productivity.