Children’s developing moral stances on redistributive justice in the context of disability-based and migration-based inequalities

This study will investigate how children judge and reason about acts of redistributive justice when faced with social inequalities arising from individuals’ disability and migration status. While children’s moral stances regarding structural inequalities have received increasing attention in recent work, it is unclear (1) how children navigate different types of structural inequalities (e.g., disability-based, migration-based) and (2) how children therein incorporate the importance of the resource types involved (necessary vs. luxury resources). That is, how do children weigh conflicting moral stances on ownership, others’ welfare, equity, and equality when judging acts that challenge disability- and migration-based inequalities of necessary and luxury resources and how does this process unfold over development? In the present work, 4- to 9-year-olds will be presented with agents performing acts of redistributive justice (e.g., Robin Hood). The underlying social inequality (unequal resource possessions) will be depicted as either arising (1) from recipients’ unequal physical health (disability condition with the disabled child possessing fewer resources than the non-disabled child), (2) from recipients’ unequal knowledge of the language spoken at school (migration condition with one child not knowing the language due to a migration experience possessing fewer resources than the child knowing the language due to not having a migration experience), or (3) from recipients being unequally liked by the teacher (preference condition as control condition with the child not being liked by the teacher possessing fewer resources than the child being liked by the teacher). In each condition, children will judge the inequality itself and redistributive acts involving necessary and luxury resources. Children will then reason about their judgment. Finally, children will compare conditions and choose if they judge redistributive acts in one condition as more positively than in the other condition and reason about this judgment.