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The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games

The intergenerational transmission of inequality causes individuals to receive unearned advantages and disadvantages in society. Understanding how the transmission of unearned material status affects social interactions will help to illuminate how the relationship between material status and social...

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Main Author: Kreft, Brynde
Other Authors: Burns, Justine
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: School of Economics 2020
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access_status_str Open Access
author Kreft, Brynde
author2 Burns, Justine
author_browse Burns, Justine
Kreft, Brynde
author_facet Burns, Justine
Kreft, Brynde
author_sort Kreft, Brynde
collection Thesis
description The intergenerational transmission of inequality causes individuals to receive unearned advantages and disadvantages in society. Understanding how the transmission of unearned material status affects social interactions will help to illuminate how the relationship between material status and social connections affects an individual’s overall welfare. The behavioural responses to intergenerational inequality have proven difficult to isolate in observational data. In a series of laboratory experiments, an inherited inequality framing was shown to cause significantly different public good game contribution behaviour for various types of individual. While inheritance status improved cooperation among those who inherited a high status in groups with only others who inherited high endowments, the inheritance frame is associated with reduced cooperation in unequal groups and in groups comprised of exclusively inheritors of low material status. The inheritance frame established a powerful historical context for participants, the reduction in cooperation caused by inherited inequality persisted even after redistribution interventions which eliminated the material inequality.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:29.432Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2020
publishDateRange 2020
publishDateSort 2020
publisher School of Economics
publisherStr School of Economics
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/31135 The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games Kreft, Brynde Burns, Justine Applied Economics The intergenerational transmission of inequality causes individuals to receive unearned advantages and disadvantages in society. Understanding how the transmission of unearned material status affects social interactions will help to illuminate how the relationship between material status and social connections affects an individual’s overall welfare. The behavioural responses to intergenerational inequality have proven difficult to isolate in observational data. In a series of laboratory experiments, an inherited inequality framing was shown to cause significantly different public good game contribution behaviour for various types of individual. While inheritance status improved cooperation among those who inherited a high status in groups with only others who inherited high endowments, the inheritance frame is associated with reduced cooperation in unequal groups and in groups comprised of exclusively inheritors of low material status. The inheritance frame established a powerful historical context for participants, the reduction in cooperation caused by inherited inequality persisted even after redistribution interventions which eliminated the material inequality. 2020-02-17T11:09:46Z 2020-02-17T11:09:46Z 2019 2020-02-17T10:06:12Z Master Thesis Masters MCom http://hdl.handle.net/11427/31135 eng application/pdf School of Economics Faculty of Commerce
spellingShingle Applied Economics
Kreft, Brynde
The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games
thesis_degree_str Master's
title The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games
title_full The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games
title_fullStr The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games
title_full_unstemmed The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games
title_short The heritability of history: how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games
title_sort heritability of history how inherited status affects cooperative behaviour in public goods games
topic Applied Economics
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/31135
work_keys_str_mv AT kreftbrynde theheritabilityofhistoryhowinheritedstatusaffectscooperativebehaviourinpublicgoodsgames
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