Fighting against economic inequality is one fundamental social goal in the agendas of most governments. However, recent studies highlight that people actually prefer unequal societies, as they accept inequality generated by an individual's effort and wish to reduce only unfair inequality (generated by factors beyond an individual's control). This distinction might help to explain the fundamental unsolved question about whether inequality is good or bad for growth: unfair inequality (UI) could be growth-deterring, while fair inequality (FI) might be growth-enhancing. We derive a reduced-form growth equation from a stylized overlapping-generations model with human capital that includes FI, UI, and poverty. Then, using an instrumental variable approach, we show for alternative samples and inequality measures at the worldwide level that the estimated coefficient associated with UI is always negative, while the coefficient of total inequality increases when UI is included in the regression. Moreover, we find that poverty mediates this relationship because the higher the poverty rate, the smaller the impact of either type of inequality on growth.

中文翻译：

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不公平的不平等与增长*

消除经济不平等是大多数政府议程中的一项基本社会目标。然而，最近的研究强调，人们实际上更喜欢不平等的社会，因为他们接受由个人努力产生的不平等，并希望只减少不公平的不平等（由个人无法控制的因素产生）。这种区别可能有助于解释不平等对于增长是好是坏这一尚未解决的基本问题：不公平的不平等（UI）可能会阻碍增长，而公平的不平等（FI）可能会促进增长。我们从包含金融、失业保险和贫困在内的人力资本的程式化代际重叠模型中推导出简化形式的增长方程。然后，使用工具变量方法，我们表明，对于全球范围内的替代样本和不平等衡量标准，与 UI 相关的估计系数始终为负，而当 UI 包含在回归中时，总不平等系数会增加。此外，我们发现贫困调节了这种关系，因为贫困率越高，任何一种不平等对增长的影响就越小。