Distributive Justice and Occupational Incomes: Perceptions of Justice Determine Perceptions of Fact

ABS'I'RACT This paper investigates relationships between actual occupational incomes, perceived incomes and legitimate incomes. It is based on two Australian national surveys (N= 1000) conducted in 1988. Results indicate that the public believes that incomes ought to be much more equal than they currently are. There is support both for increasing low incomes and decreasing high incomes. However the public systematically misperceives the income distribution and erroneously believes that there is virtually no difference between legitimate incomes and actual incomes. The main implications for an empirically sound theory of distributive justice are that: (1) it is incorrect to assume that public perceptions of the distribution of social goods are even remotely accurate and (2) a normative standard of equality distorts perceptions of distributive outcomes. Perceptions of justice determine perceptions of fact rather than vice-versa. ' Using data from Australian national surveys, this paper compares actual occupational incomes with both perceived incomes and incomes regarded as legitimate. Substantively, the data enable us to address the issue of what the public believes to be a legitimate degree of income inequality and how this compares with current inequality. The data also cast light on a major issue in the sociological literature on distributive justice. This concerns the reciprocal influence of normative criteria (beliefs concerning equality) and existential criteria (beliefs based on observations of current reality) on judgments about the legitimate distribution of social goods.2 Rainwater's (1974) pioneering work first addressed the issue of the relationship between actual and legitimate incomes.3 He showed that the American public's perceptions of legitimate incomes closely approximated rankings of occupational status. This result was interpreted as indicating that the public perceived the existing distribution