미국인의 소득 불평등 인식과 인종

Americans' perception of Income Inequality and Race

This study identifies the determinants of American's perception of income inequality by using the 2012 American National Election Studies dataset. The perception of income inequality is measured by a combination of two variables; whether they recognize the increase of income gap over the past 20 years and whether they think the increased income inequality is good for the United States. The perception of income inequality increases when they get older and live in the Mid West. Protestants perceive inequality less than those of other religions or non-religion. The more educated, the more do they perceive the income inequality. On the other hand family income has no significant relationship with the perception of income inequality. Differently from the commonsense, this research demonstrates, it is not the fact of being African-Americans or Hispanics that has significant effect on the perception of inequality. Instead racial prejudice is the real cause to have impact on the perception of income inequality. The close relationship of racial problem and the perception of income inequality is proven in that many explanatory variables affect on the perception differently among White, African American and Hispanics. The three groups display quite different effects in religion, immigrant status, and racial prejudice, while they show similar effects in age, education and political orientation. This research is meaningful in finding the fact that the perception of income inequality is related not to race itself but to racial attitudes on the one hand, and to the ideology of American Dream cherished by immigrants on the other.