Income inequality makes the rich more Scrooge-like, according to study

As the annual “season of giving” dawns, a new study finds that stark income inequity — a dramatically rising trend in the United States — makes the “haves” less generous toward others.

Higher-income people were less inclined to be generous both when they came from states where income inequality is high and when they were made to believe there was a sharp divide between rich and poor, a new study found. And they were less charitable in both cases than were low-income people.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday compared the giving patterns of rich and poor.

Of the 1,498 people who participated in that survey, donation by those with household incomes above $125,000 was more prevalent among those who lived in states in which income inequality was low. Among wealthier survey-takers from states with higher income inequality, fewer took the opportunity to donate.

A wide range of recent studies had suggested that wealthy Americans are, across the board, less generous than less wealthy Americans. This study suggests stinginess is, at least, more prominent where the rich are richer and the poor are poorer.

The researchers, led by Stanford University sociologist Robb Willer, surmised that wealthy people embedded in a milieu where rich and poor live in starkly different circumstances may feel more entitled to their moneyed status, or more threatened by the prospective loss of privilege that would come if resources more evenly distributed. They may feel that the system whereby wealth is apportioned is fairer because they so rarely come into contact with the poor.