Reference Groups and Intergroup Relative Deprivation:Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

The research on the measurement of relative deprivation has been an important topic of investigation in academia since Runciman proposed the concept of relative deprivation in1966.However,existing researches pay so much attention to relative deprivation within groups but little attention to intergroup deprivation.By establishing a comparative group,this paper constructs a unified analytical framework of the measurement of individual deprivation based on the idea of integrated reference group and obtains the measurement of intergroup individual absolute and relative deprivation.Then it provides the method of drawing the curve of relative deprivation between different groups and characterizes the aggregated intergroup relative deprivation.Finally,it uses the data of CGSS2008 to do the empirical analysis.This paper expands the measurement of relative deprivation from within-group to intergroup,makes up the shortcomings of the research on the measurement of intergroup relative deprivation and enlarges the application scope of relative deprivation theory.And it confiems that existing measurement of relative deprivation is just a special example with two equal groups.