The Development of the Conception of Economic Inequality. I. Descriptions and Comparisons of Rich and Poor People

LEAHY, ROBERT L. The Development of the Conception of Economic Inequality. I. Descriptions and Comparisons of Rich and Poor People. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 523-532. Children and adolescents from 4 social classes were asked to describe rich and poor people and to indicate how the rich and the poor are different and similar to each other. Responses were classified into categories of person description, including peripheral (possessions, appearances, and behaviors), central (traits and thoughts), and sociocentric (life chances and class consciousness) categories. Adolescents emphasized central and sociocentric categories more than younger children who, in turn, emphasized peripheral characteristics in their descriptions. Lowerand working-class subjects were more likely than upper-middle-class subjects to mention life chances and thoughts in describing the rich and the poor, while upper-middle-class subjects were more likely than subjects from other classes to mention the traits of the poor. Descriptions and comparisons of the rich and the poor were generally unrelated to sociological dimensions of social class. The findings were interpreted in terms of cognitive-developmental and functionalist theories of the development of social concepts.