Unveiling Inequality: An Open-Ended Survey Approach

What comes to people’s mind when they are asked to think about inequality? How do the answers vary for different groups in society? We explore the concept of inequality through an open-ended survey question, rather than treating inequality as a descriptive or self-evident term. In a two-wave panel survey, we asked N=4,200 respondents to describe the societal inequalities that come to mind in the German context. Responses were categorized through a combination of computational analysis and human expertise. We find that privileged groups tend to omit the types of inequalities that benefit them, while disadvantaged groups actively highlight those that affect them. For example, women frequently mention gender inequality and Eastern Germans highlight east-west disparities. Notably, the perception of economic inequality deviates from this pattern: there is no relationship between respondents’ objective income or wealth levels, and their propensity to mention economic inequality-related topics. This cleavage in perceptions of inequality highlights the lack of demand for redistributive policy among economically disadvantaged groups. The second survey wave, conducted two years later, reveals the (in-)stability of respondents’ perception of inequality. This study makes three contributions. First, we provide a deeper understanding of citizens’ perceptions of inequality. Second, we contribute to methodological discussions on how to best measure inequality by using an open question. Third, we provide a multilevel dictionary for future research to categorize different kinds of inequality in varying degree of detail.