Who Deserves to Be Rich? Children’s and Adults’ Judgments of the Wealthy

There are many factors that determine why some people end up having more money and resources than others. Research suggests that reasons outside an individual’s control, including structural factors such as access to education and systemic racism (Salter et al., 2018) as well as family income (Korom, 2016, 2018) greatly affect how much wealth a person might accumulate. However, research focusing on adults’ (Huber & Form, 1973; Trump, 2020; van Oorschot & Halman, 2000) and children’s (Enesco & Navarro, 2003; Mistry et al., 2012; Peretz-Lange et al., 2021) explanations of why some people are rich tends to find an overemphasis on factors that are related to individuals, in particular effort and hard work. In other words, to borrow from the attribution literature (e.g., Weiner, 1985a), people tend to attribute wealth to controllable and internal causes. This tendency also appears to have consequences, as such explanations of inequality has been associated with the justification of these inequalities both in children (Gonzalez et al., 2023; Goudeau & Cimpian, 2021) and in adults (García-Sánchez et al., 2022; Jost et al., 2003; Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Krijnen et al., 2022).

Importantly, however, there are individual variables that affect this tendency to attribute economic success to personal effort, for instance; adults who are from less privileged or marginalized backgrounds are more likely to pay attention to non-meritorious reasons for poverty (Huber & Form, 1973; Newman et al., 2015; Shariff et al., 2016). There are also age-related changes (e.g., Diaz et al., 2022; Flanagan et al., 2014) mapping on to theorized via the Social-Reasoning Development Model (Elenbaas et al., 2020; Killen et al., 2018; Rutland et al., 2010). In short, while younger children are more likely to focus on individual reasons for wealth, as they grow older, especially during adolescence, children become more likely to consider structural reasons, which, due to their abstract nature, could be more difficult to grasp for younger children (Diaz et al., 2022; Elenbaas et al., 2020; Flanagan et al., 2014; Killen et al., 2018; Rutland et al., 2010).

As described above, people tend to assume that wealthy people deserve their wealth, (Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Jost & Pelham, 2003). But when it comes to thinking about what kind of people the rich are, people’s attributions are often ambivalent. For instance, adults tend to believe the wealthy to be competent but cold (Durante et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2018). Attitudes also change across development. From the preschool years children tend to favor the rich (An et al., 2020; Essler et al., 2020; Li et al., 2014; Olson et al., 2008, 2011; Sigelman, 2013). Younger children in particular tend to believe not only that the rich are more capable (Roussos & Dunham, 2016; Shutts et al., 2016; Sigelman, 2012), but also that they are nicer (Li et al., 2014; Roussos & Dunham, 2016). However, potentially because they develop a better understanding of the social structures for wealth differences and power dynamics (Leahy, 1981, 1983), children’s views of the rich become both less positive and more nuanced with age (Yang & Dunham, 2022).

In short, there is a rich literature showing that children from very young ages develop theories to explain why some people are richer than others, and how they might expect these wealthy people to be like. However, this literature has a limitation, which is that it typically treats all wealthy individuals alike, ignoring how that wealth was accumulated. Limited research, however, suggests this may be an important contributor to how people conceptualize wealth and the wealthy.

Although somewhat limited, existing research suggests that adults do in fact consider why someone is rich when judging their characteristics. For instance, people are more favorable towards individuals who have earned their wealth as compared to those who did not, such as heirs (Sussman et al., 2014), and expect individuals who worked for their wealth to use it more wisely and charitably (Rinn et al., 2023). Turning to developmental work, research again suggests that children can attend to the origin of resources. In infancy (Sloane et al., 2012) and beyond (Baumard et al., 2012; Kanngiesser & Warneken, 2012) children believe that resources obtained through merit are more deserved than resources obtained through rigged systems (Shaw & Olson, 2014) or through social biases (such as when a child is favored based on their gender; Corbit et al., 2021; Rizzo et al., 2020; Rizzo & Killen, 2020). Most relevant, a recent study by Gonzales et al., (2022) suggests that 7-10 year-old children are more likely to perpetuate inequality (i.e., give more resources to the rich) if they were told the reason for this inequality is because the wealthy group worked harder (i.e., a reason that is both internal and controllable) as opposed to them being more intelligent (internal but uncontrollable) or because they were lucky in the past (external and uncontrollable). These studies help us understand how children consider the origins of resources in cases of resource distribution, however, this literature leaves two open questions which we will focus on in this paper.

The first of these questions concerns how children and adults perceive one source of wealth acquisition that plays a significant role in real-world income inequality, yet has surprisingly received little attention in psychology research: inheritance. Family wealth is one of the primary predictors of the economic position an individual will occupy (Korom, 2016), and thus the intergenerational transmission of wealth is among the largest contributors to sustained inequality (Bowles & Gintis, 2002; Feiveson & Sabelhaus, 2018; Nekoei & Seim, 2023). Research on how young people view the deservingness of inheritance is scarce, and understanding how children might think about the deservingness of inherited resources is challenging based on existing research, as inheritance does not neatly fit into previously tested categories. Although conceptually related to luck, inheritance is not entirely explained by it. For example, because intergenerational wealth tends to accumulate in certain racial and ethnic groups not everyone has an equal chance to inherit wealth (Avery & Rendall, 2002; Kent, 2019). Inheritance also cannot be fully attributed to internal reasons, as it is only tenuously related to personal merit; recipients are legally rightful owners not because they created the wealth but because their family chose to leave it to them. Given its complicated nature, the legitimacy of inheritance remains a contentious topic among adults (Brassington, 2019; Dowding, 2008). While some believe that the right to inherit should be exercised freely as long as the original creators of this wealth consent (e.g., Friedman, 2002; Nozick, 1974; Rothbard, 2006), others contend that acquiring large amounts of resources without personally working for them is unfair (e.g., Dworkin, 2000; Haslett, 1986; Mill, 1965; Piketty, 2014). Understanding how children, who are less familiar with political and legal debates, perceive inheritance could help address the controversy among adults. Additionally, since inheritance provides a relatively clear example of how systemic factors and family relations influence economic success, exploring whether children view this as a distinct method of acquiring wealth could be enlightening. This might also allow us to see if highlighting the role of family connections helps children recognize one of the (typically) uncontrollable and (relatively) external causes of wealth inequality.

The second question we address concerns how the origin of wealth influences children’s perceptions of the wealthy. As explained above, existing research shows how economic status information affects children’s judgments but often disregards how wealth was acquired. However, findings suggest that older children are more likely to associate wealth with competence rather than luck, hinting that they might justify wealth by assuming the wealthy are competent (Sigelman, 2013). In this study we also investigated how learning the source of wealth affects children’s biases of the wealthy to test if non-meritorious origins of wealth will prevent children from automatically assuming a wealthy person is competent.

To close these gaps in the literature, in this study, we explored judgments of wealth deservingness and biases toward wealthy individuals in children aged 5-12. We also tested a sample of adults to observe whether changes in judgments about wealth persist beyond the middle childhood period. Our primary aim is descriptive, namely to characterize age-related changes in how knowing the origin of their wealth affects people’s judgments of a wealthy person and the legitimacy of that wealth.

To this end, we introduced participants to characters who were equally wealthy but acquired their wealth from different sources: unexplained sources, merit (i.e., hard work), luck (i.e., lottery win), inheritance, and stealing. The unexplained sources condition served as a baseline and aimed to test how people of different ages judge and spontaneously explain wealth acquired from non-disclosed origins. We added the luck and merit conditions because previous studies show they differentially impact children’s deservingness judgments, at least in resource distribution (Schmidt et al., 2016; Sigelman, 2013). The theft condition served as a comparison point for unambiguously illegitimate wealth acquisition. We included the inheritance condition because children’s perspectives on this matter remain largely unexplored. We hypothesized that participants would perceive individuals who earned their wealth through hard work as the most deserving and those who stole money as the least deserving. Given widespread support for the right to inherit assets (e.g., Newport, 2016; Quinnipiac University Poll, 2017), we hypothesized that participants would find the person who inherited their wealth more deserving than the lottery winner (luck condition), but less deserving than the hardworking individual.

We also looked at how information about wealth origins would affect children’s and adults’ perceptions of the people who earned their fortunes in these various ways, focusing on perceptions of warmth and competence (i.e., their ideas on the two central dimensions of social cognition; Fiske et al., 2007). We expected that warmth judgments would align with deservingness ratings, while competence judgments would differ. Specifically, we expected that inheritors (because of the negative stereotypes about them [Rinn et al., 2023; Sussman et al., 2014]) and individuals who stole money might not be perceived as nice. However, we expected them to be seen as competent because inheritors, coming from wealthy families, likely had access to good education or other opportunities, and people who stole money would need to be stealthy and conniving to do so successfully (Note that since we conducted the child study after the adult study, we updated our specific hypotheses based on the adult study results, as outlined in our preregistration).

Lastly, as an additional question to better understand what children and adults think about the deservingness of inherited resources, we asked whether participants believe the children of the wealthy people featured in this experiment deserve to benefit from their parents’ wealth. For instance, do people believe that if a person has earned their wealth meritoriously, their children deserve a piece of this wealth more compared to cases where this wealth was won in a lottery or inherited from previous generations?

In summary, in this experiment we address two primary questions: 1) Do people’s evaluations of the wealthy and their perceptions of the deservingness of wealth depend on how individuals acquired their resources? 2) Are there age-related changes in these judgments? This investigation contributes to our understanding of how perceptions of income inequalities evolve throughout development.

We report all the measures and data exclusions. Details on the sample characteristics, data exclusions, preregistrations, additional measures and analyses can be found in the supplement https://osf.io/t4fh9/​?view_​only​=​e3a23​e66f67646​c6901​daec172713​1a4. The study was approved by the Yale University’s IRB ethics commission prior to data collection.

The final samples comprised 154 adults (recruited via prolific.com, Mage = 39.54, range = 19-71 years, 89 females, 60 males, 5 other; 121 White, 4 Black, 4 East Asian, 11 Latine/Hispanic, 11 Multiracial, 3 other) and 120 5-12 year-olds (recruited via Yale Social Cognitive Development Lab database, 15 participant per each age, M age = 8.95, range = 5 years – 12 years and 11 months; 59 females, 61 males; 68 White, 19 Asian, 9 Black, 6 Multiracial, 5 Latine/Hispanic, 13 did not report race). These sample sizes can detect effect sizes of η² = .07 for the adult and η² = .09 for the child sample for the five-level within-subjects variable with α = .05 and power = 0.80. For the analyses where we tested the interaction between the child participants’ age and the five-level within-subjects variable, the child sample size can detect effect sizes of η² = .09 (via G*Power, Faul et al., 2009). We chose 5-year-olds as the youngest age group because pilot testing suggested they were capable of following the scenarios presented to them during the experiment, and we selected 12-year-olds as the oldest age group for convenience and to observe how children’s judgments change once they start thinking more critically about wealth and related social structures, typically after around 7 years of age (e.g., Leahy, 1981; Yang & Dunham, 2022). Both the adult and child participants resided in the U.S. For adult participants, the median household income was between $50,000 and $74,999 (as a reference point, in 2022 the median house income in the US was $74,580 [Guzman & Kollar, 2023]). Nearing half (44.81%) of the participants had a bachelor’s or a graduate degree. For child participants, the median household income was between $100,001 and $125,000, while the sample was skewed towards higher income families. Amongst the parents who reported their education level (82.5%), almost all of them (87.88%) had a bachelor’s or a graduate degree.

The method was the same for adult and child experiments, except where noted. For child participants, consent from their parents was received before the experimental session, and participant’s assent was obtained at the beginning of the experimental session. Each child was tested online over Zoom, with an experimenter reading the script to the participants and prompting them when necessary to respond to the questions. Each experimental session presented five within-participant trials, each featuring a 56-60 years-old person, described as having “a lot of money” (see Figure 1a ). All targets were White, 3 of them were female and 2 were male. The matching of each target and the trial type was counterbalanced across participants. The first trial was the baseline trial. In this trial participants were not told how this person had acquired their money, and instead were asked to generate up to three guesses regarding the possible sources of their wealth. In the subsequent four randomly ordered trials, participants learned how the target rich person had obtained their wealth, which was through hard work, winning the lottery, inheritance, or stealing money from a bank. In each trial participants answered four questions about the rich person (see Figure 1b ). “Do you think X (the target character) deserves to have this money?” was always the first question, and it was followed by warmth and competence judgments (order randomized). To ensure that young children can comprehend these questions, we asked, “Do you think X is a nice person?” as the measure of warmth and “Do you think X is smart?” as the measure of competence. Although these questions employ simplified terminology to describe warmth and competence, previous research (e.g., Roussos & Dunham (2016)) suggests that they can be used reliably to assess these judgments with children. Following the warmth and competence judgment questions, the fourth question inquired whether the child of the target person deserved to inherit the person’s wealth. Before asking these questions, we first reminded the participants how the target person acquired their wealth, informed them that this person had given a portion of their money to their adult child, and asked whether they believed this person (i.e., the rich person’s child; the first-generation inheritor), who now also has “a lot of money” thanks to their parent, deserved to have this money. All four dependent variable questions used the same response format, a 6-point scale ranging from “Definitely No” to “Definitely Yes”, see Figure 1b ).

Adult participants did the survey unsupervised. Their consent was obtained before they started the survey. The child participants did not answer any additional attention check or experimental questions, however; adult participants answered three attention check questions and three additional experimental questions. These questions, and a replication study with a larger representative adult sample, are reported in the supplement.

We first coded participants’ guesses as to how the character in the baseline condition might have acquired their money into these categories: work (i.e., hard work or job/occupation), family/inheritance, investment, marriage, luck, and other. Two undergraduate coders coded the adult responses, with a third undergraduate coder joining for the coding of child responses. Intercoder reliability reached 97% for the adult data and 96% for the child data, calculated based on 25% of the data coded by both (for the adult data) or all three (for the child data) coders. Disagreements were resolved by discussion (see the Supplement for further details on the coding process). The coders were able to code 97.4% of adults’ initial guesses on the source of wealth, the majority of which were related to work (49.33%), followed by family/inheritance (32.67%) and successful investments (9.33%). All of the initial guesses children provided were codable, which again tended to focus on work (74.33%). This suggests that adult as well as child participants’ initial inclination was to attribute wealth to meritorious means rather than passive or nefarious ways of making money (also note, however, that across their 3 guesses adults considered family/inheritance related explanations often as well, see Table 1 ).

Next, we analyzed whether participants thought the rich characters deserved their money using a linear regression model predicting the deservingness rating as a function of wealth origin. For this and all subsequent models the condition with an unspecified source of wealth (i.e., the baseline condition) was set as the reference category and participant ID was added as a random intercept to account for repeated measures. For adult participants, the main effect of wealth origin was significant (F(4, 612) = 381.12, p < .001; η_p² = 0.71, 95% CI [0.69, 1.00]) (all main and interaction effects were calculated using the drop 1 function in R). A post-hoc analysis exploring the effects of wealth origin using Bonferroni corrections suggested that all conditions differed from one another (all ps ≤ .001, see Figure 2 , details on all post-hoc comparisons are provided in the supplement). As expected, deservingness judgments were the highest in the merit condition (M = 4.54, SD = .90). Luck condition (M = 3.77, SD = 1.22) was next highest, followed by baseline (M = 3.32, SD = 1.19), inheritance (M = 2.76, SD =1.57), and then stealing (M = .29, SD = .94) conditions.

For the child sample we also added participants’ age and the interaction with condition. The interaction was significant, (Figure 3 ) (F(4, 472) = 3.23, p = .012; η_p² = 0.03, 95% CI [.003, 1.00]). To decompose this interaction we report simple slopes of age for each condition. For luck, inheritance, and stealing conditions the slopes were negative (ps < .015), suggesting that wealth deservingness judgments were less extreme in older children, but for the merit and baseline conditions the slopes were not different than zero (ps ≥ .124, for full outputs of simple slopes analyses see the supplement). Overall, deservingness ratings were highest in the merit condition (M = 4.88, SD = .57) and lowest in the stealing condition (M = .42, SD = 1.23). Unlike adults, however, the luck (M = 3.57, SD = 1.64) and inheritance (M = 3.21, SD = 1.61) conditions did not differ from each other (p = .140). In addition, the baseline condition (M = 3.91, SD = 1.07) did not differ from the luck condition (M = 3.57, SD = 1.64, p = .177). All other comparisons were significant, ps < .001.

Both for the adult and the child data, the largest difference was between the Merit and the Stealing conditions. This comparison yielded a large effect size both for adult (Cohen’s d = 2.92, calculated using the cohens_d function from the rstatix package [Kassambara, 2023]), and child participants (Cohen’s d = 3.09). This suggests that in line with previous studies showing moderate to large effect sizes for 6 years and older children’s tendency to approve of or make meritorious allocations (Baumard et al., 2012; Schmidt et al., 2016; Sigelman & Waitzman, 1991), participants in this study also approved meritorious allocations more than nonmeritorious ones. For adult participants, the comparison that yielded the smallest effect size was Baseline and Luck conditions (Cohen’s d = .36), which was about 1/8 of the effect size for the comparison between Merit and Stealing conditions, and a conventionally small one. For child participants, amongst the significant comparisons the comparison between the Baseline and the Inheritance conditions yielded the smallest effect size (Cohen’s d = .38), which again was about 1/8 of the effect size for the comparison between the Merit and Stealing conditions and a conventionally small one.

We now turn to character judgment ratings, beginning with competence. For adult participants, the main effect of wealth origin was significant (Figure 4 ) (F(4, 612) = 49.96, p < .001; η_p² = 0.25, 95% CI [0.20, 1.00]). Participants believed the character who acquired their money through merit was the smartest (i.e., the most competent) (M = 4.04, SD = .88), followed by the baseline (M = 3.56, SD = .72) condition. Luck (M = 3.04, SD = .73) and inheritance (M = 2.95, SD = .70) conditions did not differ from each other (p = .916), and the inheritance condition did not differ from the stealing (M = 2.71, SD = 1.59) condition (p = .167, all other comparisons were significant, ps ≤ .018) (Figure 4 ).

For children we observed an interaction between participant age and wealth origin (Figure 5 ) (F(4, 472) = 8.37, p < .001; η_p² = 0.07, 95% CI [.03, 1.00]). Simple slopes analysis showed that for merit and stealing conditions the slopes did not differ from zero (ps ≥ .556), but for the luck, inheritance, and baseline conditions the slopes were negative (ps ≤ .039), suggesting that older children were less likely to believe the wealthy character in these conditions were competent compared to younger ones. Overall child participants reported that the character who acquired their money through merit was the most competent (M = 4.60, SD = .75). This was followed up by the baseline (M = 3.98, SD = 1.03) and inheritance (M = 3.73, SD = 1.24) conditions (which did not differ from each other, p = .504), and then the luck condition (M = 3.50, SD = 1.35, which did not differ from the inheritance condition, p = .573). The competence ratings were the lowest in the stealing condition (M = 2.44, SD = 1.90); all other comparisons were significant, ps ≤ .019 (Figure 4 ).

In terms of the effect sizes for these condition comparisons, for adult participants the largest difference was between the Merit and the Inheritance conditions (Cohen’s d = 1.15). The effect size for the Merit and Stealing conditions was moderate (Cohen’s d = .69). For the child sample, similar to the deservingness comparisons, the largest difference was again between the Merit and the Stealing conditions, (Cohen’s d = 1.01), but this effect size was about 1/3 of the effect size observed in the deservingness comparisons. This suggests that both for adult and child participants the difference between the Merit and Stealing conditions for competence judgments was not as large as the differences observed for deservingness judgments, but this effect was still moderate to large. Amongst the significant comparisons, the comparison between the Luck and the Stealing conditions yielded the smallest effect size (Cohen’s d = .18) for adult participants, a quite small albeit statistically significant effect. For children, the significant comparison that yielded the smallest effect size was between the Baseline and the Luck conditions (Cohen’s d = .35), a conventionally small effect.

Turning to warmth ratings, for adult participants the main effect of wealth origin was significant (Figure 6 ) (F(4, 612) = 294.99, p < .001; η_p² = 0.66, 95% CI [0.63, 1.00]). Adult participants believed that the character who acquired their money through merit was the nicest (M = 3.52, SD = .88), followed by luck (M = 3.19, SD = .65), baseline (M = 3.08, SD = .86), and inheritance (M = 2.85, SD = .88) conditions. The baseline condition did not differ from the luck or the inheritance conditions (ps = .708 and .097, respectively). Warmth ratings were the lowest in the stealing condition (M = .73, SD = 1.06). All other comparisons were significant, ps ≤ 004. (Figure 6 ).

For child participants, the interaction between age and wealth origin was again significant (Figure 7 ), (F(4, 472) = 3.03, p = .018; η_p² = 0.03, 95% CI [.002, 1.00]). Simple slopes analysis showed that in all conditions the slopes were negative (ps ≤ .030), suggesting that older children’s warmth judgments were lower than the younger children’s judgments across all conditions. Overall child participants believed the character who acquired their money through merit was the nicest (M = 4.43, SD = .68), followed by the luck (M = 3.98, SD = .93), inheritance (M = 3.93, SD = 1.07), and baseline (M = 3.87, SD = 1.16) conditions, which did not differ from each other (ps ≥ .879). Warmth ratings, once again, were the lowest in the stealing condition (M = .90, SD = 1.38). (Figure 7 ).

Turning to effect sizes for these comparisons, for the adult sample the largest effect size was between the Luck and Stealing conditions (Cohen’s d = 1.87), but the comparison between the Merit and Stealing conditions (Cohen’s d = 1.76) was a close second. In the child sample, similar to the deservingness comparisons, the largest difference was again between the Merit and Stealing conditions (Cohen’s d = 2.47). However, the effect size for this comparison was approximately 1.25 times larger in the deservingness comparisons. For the adult sample, amongst the significant comparisons, the comparison between the Luck and Merit conditions yielded the smallest effect size (Cohen’s d = .37). The effect size for the comparison between the Inheritance and Luck conditions was also small (Cohen’s d = .40). For the child sample, the smallest significant effect size was for the comparison between the Inheritance and Merit conditions (Cohen’s d = .45), although the comparison between the Baseline and Merit conditions (Cohen’s d = .46), and the Luck and Merit conditions (Cohen’s d = .49) were comparably small. Overall, these effect sizes suggest that for warmth judgments all conditions were relatively close to each other, except for the Stealing condition, which was, once again, significantly lower from all conditions.

Lastly, we report participants’ judgments on whether the wealthy target’s child (i.e., the next-generation inheritor), who now also has a lot of money thanks to their parents, deserved to have this money. For adult participants the main effect of wealth origin was significant (F(4, 612) = 200.26, p < .001; η_p² = 0.57, 95% CI [0.53, 1.00]) (Figure 8). Adult participants believed this person deserved their money equally in the merit (M = 3.20, SD = 1.43) and the luck (M = 3.11, SD = 1.42) conditions (p = .916). These two conditions were followed up by the baseline (M = 2.72, SD = 1.43) and the inheritance (M = 2.73, SD = 1.55) conditions, which also did not differ from each other (p = 1.000). The ratings were again lowest in the stealing condition (M = .58, SD = 1.06). All other comparisons were significant, ps ≤ .004. (Figure 8 ).

For the child sample, the interaction between the participants’ age and wealth origin was significant (Figure 9 ) (F(4, 472) = 2.43, p = .047; η_p² = 0.02, 95% CI [0.0001, 1.00]). However, simple slopes analyses showed that in all conditions the slopes were negative (ps < .012), which suggests that older child participants’ wealth deservingness judgments for the next-generation inheritors were lower than the younger ones’ judgments in all conditions. Child participants believed these people deserved their money equally in merit (M = 3.31, SD = 1.62), inheritance (M = 3.24, SD = 1.59) and luck (M = 3.00, SD = 1.74) conditions (p > .324). These conditions were followed up by the baseline condition (M = 2.85, SD = 1.74), which differed from the merit (p = .041), but not from the inheritance and the luck conditions (p > .117). The stealing condition (M = 1.62, SD = 1.75) once again received the lowest deservingness ratings, and differed from all conditions (ps < .001) (Figure 8 ).

In terms of effect sizes for these comparisons, for the adult sample the comparison between the Merit and Stealing conditions yielded the largest effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.54) but the comparison between the Luck and Stealing conditions (Cohen’s d = 1.50) was a close second. For children, the comparison between the Inheritance and the Stealing condition yielded the largest effect size (Cohen’s d = .86), but the comparison between the Merit and the Stealing conditions was a close second (Cohen’s d = .81). All these effect sizes, however, were smaller than the effect sizes observed in the initial deservingness question for these comparisons. Amongst the significant comparisons, for the adult sample the smallest effect size was observed in the comparison between the Inheritance and Luck conditions (Cohen’s d = .40), but the comparisons between the Baseline and Luck, Inheritance and Merit, and Baseline and Merit conditions were also conventionally small (Cohen’s ds = .41-.50). For the child participants, amongst the significant comparisons the smallest effect size was the comparison between the Baseline and Merit conditions (Cohen’s d = .28). Overall, while the general pattern of condition differences resembled the initial deservingness question, the effect sizes here tended to be smaller.

In this study we investigated how adults’ and 5–12-year-old children’s views of rich people change depending on how their wealth was acquired. The results align with existing research (e.g., Kanngiesser & Warneken, 2012; Sussman et al., 2014) suggesting that 5-12 year-old children as well as adults believe that money acquired via ill means is less deserved than money that is earned, inherited or won in a lottery, and money that is earned via hard work is most deserved. But the current results also provide insight into how people think about different sources of wealth. First, the results show that adults think wealth acquired as a result of windfall, which we defined as winning the lottery, is more deserved than inherited wealth. Adults also believe that a person who acquired their wealth from the lottery is nicer than a person who inherited their money. We consider this somewhat surprising given the popularity of policies protecting the rights to inherit resources (e.g., Prabhakar, 2015). Some participants’ answers to the open-ended exploratory questions offer some insight. As one participant put it, the lottery money is won “fair and square”; people who buy lottery tickets do so willingly, but people who inherit money could be part of a system that might be contributing to intergenerational inequality (Bowles & Gintis, 2002; Feiveson & Sabelhaus, 2018). Therefore, it is possible that even though our participants might in principle be okay with inheriting assets, they believe lottery winnings are more deserved.

When it comes to children’s judgments, while younger children were more likely to believe wealth was deserved in general, older children were more likely to believe certain sources of wealth are less deserved than others, in particular wealth that is stolen, inherited, or won in a lottery. Judgments concerning unexplained and earned wealth did not change over this period. Interestingly, unlike adults, children, including the oldest ones tested here, did not believe wealth won from the lottery is more deserved than inherited wealth. One potential explanation for this could be children’s relative lack of exposure to different means of making money. While children might learn a lot about the importance and relevance of merit and hard work for success in school settings or from children’s media, such as books like “The Little Engine That Could” by Watty Piper, which highlight the power of hard work and perseverance, they might hear less about possibilities such as inheritance or lotteries, and therefore may have less developed views concerning them. It is also possible that both the lottery and inheritance seem to children like windfall cases; by contrast, adults may think of inheritance in terms of the free transfer of deserved assets. In either case, these results suggest that the way children think about inherited resources change after the age of 12, potentially as a result of more exposure to different means of acquiring resources, and more observations about how one’s family’s resources might explain their own prospects.

For adult participants we also see a difference between the inheritance and the luck conditions in their judgments of whether the child of the wealthy person deserves a portion of their parents’ wealth. Adults believe that this child deserves to have their parents’ money more if this money is won in a lottery compared to when it is acquired from previous generations. Interestingly, for this question the luck condition does not differ from the merit condition. These findings yield support to the idea that adults believe continued intergenerational wealth transfer is less acceptable than the transfer of wealth that is acquired by one’s parents. For children the results suggest that they believe the child of a person deserves their parents’ money when this money is earned, won in a lottery, or inherited, equally. But we also see that older children are less likely to believe this wealth transfer between wealthy parents and their children is acceptable. Our child data is cross-sectional and therefore cannot directly speak to developmental change, but these finding suggest that as they get older, children, similar to adults, start to agree with the idea that inherited wealth or resources acquired from one’s parents becomes less deserved compared to other means of wealth acquisition, such as lotteries.

We also see that compared to the younger children, older children are less likely to think that wealthy people are nice regardless of the source of wealth (although note that overall both children and adults generally view wealthy characters as nice, with the exception of the person who stole their money) Overall, older children are also less likely to think that wealthy people are competent, but again, this decline does not affect all wealth sources equally: competence judgments do not change with age for people who earned their money or who stole their money and instead only judgments of inheritors, lottery winners, and for those with unexplained wealth declined with age. These results suggest that although children under the ages of 6-7 tend to believe that wealthy individuals are equally competent regardless of how they acquired their wealth, except when there is clear evidence of immorality (e.g., stealing), as they age, their judgments of competence become more conditional. For older children, evidence suggesting that an individuals’ wealth is not due to their own competence makes them less likely to believe that person is competent, suggesting that making other potential explanations of economic success rather than merit more available to children might prevent them from assuming wealthy people are in this position because of the kinds of people they are- able and competent. That said, it is interesting to note that both children and adults indicated that the person who stole their money is not as competent as the person who worked for their money or the person who won the lottery. This shows that even in adults, judgments of the competence of a person who stole money were affected by their character judgments.

While our results offer intriguing insights into evolving perceptions of wealth during development, some open questions remain. One such question relates to how we defined wealth in the current experiment. In the reported study we simply informed participants that the characters possessed “a lot of money” without specifying the exact amount. In a replication study involving adult participants (see Supplementary Materials), we provided a clearer definition, stating that these individuals were “wealthy by objective standards” with a high net worth and financial resources exceeding those accessible to the majority of people. The results of the two studies were highly consistent, implying that people’s judgments might be stable across various levels of wealth. However, it would be interesting to test whether these judgments hold for characters with extreme wealth, characters who have merely enough resources for comfortable living, and for characters who do not have enough resources for comfortable living. A recent study (Aldan & Dunham, 2024) supports the idea that people might judge the deservingness of resources acquired from different origins differently depending on their value. Unlike what we found here, this study suggests that for resources of small values, such as a few dollars or small toys, adults might be more likely to believe that these resources are more deserved if they are given to them by their family members as opposed to when they are acquired just by luck, while children, similar to these current results, do not differentiate between these two sources.

Another avenue for future research involves examining how children form views concerning wealth and income inequality. The exploratory analyses we report in the supplement suggest that parents’ political ideology might be related to children’s deservingness judgments. Participants with conservative parents were more likely to believe that wealthy people deserve their wealth, especially for the unexplained wealth condition. Given that our sample was non-representative US-based convenience sample and the analyses involving parent political orientation were exploratory, these results should be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, they suggest that investigating what children absorb from their parents’ belief systems may help us better understand the development of individual differences in wealth judgments (Gevaux et al., 2020; Gonzalez et al., 2022).

In addition, in this experiment we explained how each character acquired their wealth in simple terms. However, in reality, wealth accumulation involves a complex interplay of factors, including luck, hard work, social connections, and more. People’s judgments concerning such cases might depend on which one of these factors they attribute a person’s success to. Research suggests that adults (Huber & Form, 1973; Trump, 2020; Weiner, 1985b) as well as children (Enesco & Navarro, 2003; Mistry et al., 2012; Peretz-Lange et al., 2021) tend to make meritorious explanations for wealth. Our results support these findings by showing that when asked how a rich person might have acquired their money, adults and children’s initial guesses predominantly focused on merit-based explanations. Future research could explore how children use meritocratic logic to explain more complicated and realistic cases of income inequality, and test whether making potential non-meritorious explanations for wealth, such as family-related reasons, which our results suggest that does not come to children’s minds easily, more accessible to them might reduce the tendency to assume that individuals in lower socio-economic status brackets are there due to intrinsic reasons.

The samples tested in this experiment were non-representative convenience samples (e.g., all US-based, majority white), limiting the generalizability of the results. Additionally, as described in the methods section, the child sample came from relatively wealthier backgrounds compared to the median US family (though the adult sample was closer to the median US income level). Our exploratory analyses did not show an effect of personal or family income on participants’ overall judgments of deservingness, nor did income interact with wealth origin information for either the child or adult sample, or for the adult replication sample reported in the Supplement (these analyses can be replicated using the data and analysis files in the Supplement). This suggests that at least for these samples, differences between wealth origin conditions are robust to individual income differences. However, given previous research indicating that participants’ economic conditions affect how they explain and justify wealth differences (Huber & Form, 1973; Newman et al., 2015; Shariff et al., 2016), testing more diverse samples in terms of income might have yielded different results, and including more representatives from lower-income groups might have revealed such effects.

In addition, in this study, the target wealthy individuals were all white, and we counterbalanced their gender identity across conditions. However, future research should explore whether the race, ethnicity, or intersectionality of these targets’ social identities have different effects on children’s deservingness judgments for wealth acquired from various sources. For instance, participants might view intergenerational wealth transfers more negatively for majority group members, as this can enhance existing societal inequalities, but they might view it less negatively when it comes to minority group members.

Lastly, in this experiment we used a within-subjects design with the question order fixed, as participants always responded the question about deservingness first, made character judgments the second, and judgments on the next-generator inheritor’s last, which means in any given condition participants’ subsequent judgments might have been affected by the initial deservingness judgment. Hence, future research using a between-subjects design could test whether children’s judgments about wealthy people could differ if they were asked separately from their deservingness judgments, or if only one wealth origin tested here were presented to participants.

The results reported here show that children between the ages of 5 and 12 differ in terms of how they think about wealth, as older children seem to have a more nuanced understanding of wealth, realizing that not all wealth and wealthy individuals are the same, and in particular that they differ markedly in the extent to which they deserve their wealth. We also find that children in this age group do not differentiate certain sources of wealth, such as inheritance from windfall, suggesting that perceptions of different sources of wealth may further develop later in life. This pattern might explain why children’s spontaneous explanations of wealth often emphasize merit-based factors. We hope these findings will contribute to discussions and research regarding the development of children’s perceptions of inequalities across early and middle childhood.