1-107 - Youth's Thinking About Poverty and Inequality: Implications for Conceptions of Self and Society

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Rates of both poverty and inequality have increased significantly in many industrialized countries over the past decades (OECD, 2014). These longstanding economic trends have spurred a growing body of developmental research, largely focused on the negative physical and psychological consequences of poverty and inequality for child development (Evans & Kim, 2013; Yoshikawa et al., 2012). And yet, while researchers have begun exploring how adults in industrialized nations think about poverty and inequality (Norton & Ariely, 2011; Norton et al., 2014), little is known about how youth themselves understand and evaluate the ways in which societal-level economic resources are distributed. This symposium brings together three presentations and a discussion that collectively extend the literature in significant ways. First, they offer a window into how youth between the ages of 11 and 19 think about the nature of poverty and wealth inequality. Second, the inclusion of two diverse US samples and an international sample from a developing country suggests how race, SES, and the experience of growing up amid moderate versus extreme poverty and inequality moderate youth's thinking in these realms. Finally, in linking youth’s reasoning about poverty and inequality to their judgments about other, non-economic issues, this symposium underscores how youth's thinking about societal-level economic resources provides a context for their own aspirations, for their views about interpersonal and socio-political fairness, and for their approaches to social policy political change.
 

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Cecilia Wainryb, University of Utah

Discussant

• Elliot Turiel, University of California, Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Lower Income Adolescents' Conceptions of Wealth Distribution: Connections With Perceived Societal Fairness and Academic Plans - Presenting Author: William Arsenio, Yeshiva University

• Exploring the Associations Between Youth's Explanations of Poverty at the Societal Level and Judgments of Distributive Justice - Presenting Author: Mariah Kornbluh, California State University; Alisa Pykett, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Connie Flanagan, University of Wisconsin

• Youths' Understandings and Judgments of National Wealth Distribution Amid Extreme Inequality: An Argentine Sample - Presenting Author: Alicia Barreiro, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Cecilia Wainryb, University of Utah; William Arsenio, Yeshiva University