Children’s Concern for Equity and Ownership in Contexts of Individual-based and Group-based Inequality

All societies have resource inequality, wherein some possess more resources than others. How should one respond to such inequality? We tested how children 4–13 years (N= 298) balance concerns about equity and ownership rights, when the two are at odds, in both individual (Study 1) and group (Study 2) contexts. Across these studies, children evaluated individuals who consumed their own or another’s resources, and who themselves had similar or differing amounts of resources, which provided a comprehensive examination of children’s competing concerns for ownership rights and equity. Overall, children evaluated the poor consuming resources of the rich as more acceptable than the rich consuming resources from the poor, suggesting that attention to redistributive justice is heightened in group-based contexts.