How Rich is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line

Ingrid Robeyns; Vincent Buskens; Arnout van de Rijt; Nina Vergeldt; Tanja van der Lippe

doi:10.1007/s11205-020-02552-z

How Rich is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line

Ingrid Robeyns
, Vincent Buskens
, Arnout van de Rijt
, Nina Vergeldt
, Tanja van der Lippe

European University Institute

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Is it possible to identify a ‘riches line’, distinguishing the ‘rich’ from the ‘super-rich’? Recent work in political philosophy suggests that this is theoretically possible. This study examines for the first time the empirical plausibility of a riches line, based on novel data collected from a representative sample of the Dutch population. The data reveal that the Dutch indeed draw such a line, namely between 1 and 3 million euros. Strikingly, respondents agree on its approximate location irrespective of their own income and education. Although most do not consider extreme wealth itself a severe problem and object to the government’s enforcement of limits to wealth and income, widespread support exists for increased taxation of the super-rich if that would improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable members of society.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	115–143
Number of pages	29
Journal	Social Indicators Research
Volume	154
Issue number	1
Early online date	25 Nov 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02552-z
Publication status	Published - Feb 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The funding was provided by H2020 European Research Council (Grant No. 726153).

Funding Information:
We would like to thank two anonymous referees for comments, and Bas van Bavel, Manuel Buitenhuis en Cok Vrooman for discussions of our research, and Colin Hickey for advice on the translation of the survey. In this paper, we make use of the data of the LISS (Longitudinal internet studies for the Social Sciences) panel administered by CentERData (Tilburg University, The Netherlands), and we gratefully acknowledge our collaboration on gathering the data.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).

Keywords

Evaluation
Inequality
Norms
Riches
Super-rich
Vignettes

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Robeyns2021_Article_HowRichIsTooRichMeasuringTheRiFinal published version, 824 KBLicence: CC BY

https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/406898Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "How Rich is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line",

abstract = "Is it possible to identify a {\textquoteleft}riches line{\textquoteright}, distinguishing the {\textquoteleft}rich{\textquoteright} from the {\textquoteleft}super-rich{\textquoteright}? Recent work in political philosophy suggests that this is theoretically possible. This study examines for the first time the empirical plausibility of a riches line, based on novel data collected from a representative sample of the Dutch population. The data reveal that the Dutch indeed draw such a line, namely between 1 and 3 million euros. Strikingly, respondents agree on its approximate location irrespective of their own income and education. Although most do not consider extreme wealth itself a severe problem and object to the government{\textquoteright}s enforcement of limits to wealth and income, widespread support exists for increased taxation of the super-rich if that would improve the quality of life of the most vulnerable members of society.",

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How Rich is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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