Marica Miglio

Why do socioeconomic status inequalities persist in meritocratic systems, where merits and performance should be the sole criteria of evaluation? Recent studies show that merit-based practices can have a stratifying effect on attitudes, behaviours, and performance based on social position. I further explore whether these effects occur only in the presence of a social environment, arguing that merit-based reward systems integrate a competitive structure responsible for the observed stratifying dynamics. In a survey experiment conducted in the United Kingdom (N=495), participants completed a real-effort task under different reward structures: a control condition that rewarded participation and a merit-based condition that rewarded performance. Within the merit-based conditions, participants were randomly assigned to either a solitary environment, where performance was rewarded independently of others, or a social one, where their performance was evaluated against that of other participants. The results confirm that merit-based reward systems create an ambivalent opportunity-threat dynamic: participants from low-socioeconomic positions underperform under meritocratic conditions, while participants from higher-socioeconomic positions perform better. However, this pattern is evident only when the meritocratic condition is paired with a social component, suggesting that the meritocratic emphasis on performance alone is insufficient to produce an impact. Rather, its effect is activated in combination with social dynamics of competition and comparison. This study offers an innovative perspective on the reproduction of socioeconomic status inequalities even when merit and performance are objectively rewarded. These findings also hold important implications for social stratification in educational settings and workplaces that widely implement meritocratic reward systems.

How do individuals form attitudes toward income inequalities? Recent studies have explained attitudes turning from objective macro-indicators toward subjective perceptions of inequality. While consistent results have been found, this turn risks circularity: explaining attitudes with perceptions, and perceptions with yet other attitudes, leaves the deeper questions about the origins of attitudes unanswered. This paper reintroduces an objective but novel approach questioning how attitudes toward income inequalities are formed. I theorize and test whether individuals respond to how opportunities are structured, specifically to whether skills or social origins are rewarded in the labour market. I operationalize this distinction using the Origin-Skills-Destination triangle, which separates the meritocratic path (Skills-to-Destination), the ascribed path (the Origin-to-Destination net of skills), the unequal starting point (Origin-to-Skills) and the indirect pathway through which Origin determines Skills and in turn shape Destination. I use a two-stage synthetic cohort design linking the OSD computed with PIAAC to attitudinal data from the ISSP 2009 Social Inequality module across 26 countries. Results show that the indirect pathway and the direct pathway from origin to skills are associated with stronger preferences for redistribution and higher support for progressive taxation. The direct meritocratic path is instead associated with lower salience of non-meritocratic factors in getting ahead in life. However, the structure of opportunity shapes attitudes primarily through a positional logic, as people's attitudes depend primarily on their social background. Heterogenous analyses including individuals' social background suggest, in particular, that individuals with tertiary education lower their preferences for redistribution in response to the meritocratic and indirect pathway. These results together suggest that the public may be responding to the structure of opportunity in their countries. Objective structural indicators may therefore warrant renewed attention in explaining subjective attitudes.

Why do people tolerate income inequalities even in the presence of unequal opportunities? Studies have shown that individuals are more tolerant of inequalities and less supportive of redistribution when they believe inequalities result from merit. Yet income inequalities often emerge from unequal access to resources rather than merit. By focusing exclusively on merit, previous studies have overlooked how unequal opportunities may offer a distinct pathway for the legitimisation of income inequalities. We address this gap with a laboratory experiment (N=602) in which we manipulate access to time to create unequal opportunities for success in a real-effort task. Exposure to unequal opportunities increases redistributive behaviour and preferences and reduces the legitimisation of inequalities. However, participants update their preferences only when unequal opportunities contradict a meritocratic narrative: when individuals win (lose) despite the (dis)advantage, outcomes are interpreted as deserved and redistribution is rejected. These findings suggest that increasing support for redistribution also requires confronting status positioning and deservingness beliefs rather than assuming egalitarian preferences will emerge simply from providing accurate information about inequalities.