The Meritocratic Myth. Does information provision about unequal educational opportunities affect redistributive preferences of Dutch citizens?

Economic inequality has increased throughout the West since the 1980s. Paradoxically, this has not led to more public concern and demands for redistribution. Recent literature argues this is due to a growing belief in meritocracy, which provides people with a framework which attributes economic success and failure to individual factors instead of structural ones. In this thesis, I test this assumption in a Dutch context by providing respondents information about how unequal educational opportunities relate to economic inequality. Recent reports claim the Dutch education system is losing its function as ‘great equaliser’ as students from high-income families are much more likely to finish higher education than their equally intelligent low-income counterparts. Theoretically, this information should undermine meritocratic beliefs and subsequently produce greater support for economic redistribution. Besides examining attitudes regarding more or less redistribution, I also analyse how respondents want redistribution to take place. Due to their indirect and decommodifying nature, I argue that investment policies (e.g., childcare) fit the meritocratic belief system better than consumption policies (e.g., unemployment benefits). Therefore, confrontation with the unmeritocratic foundation of inequality should produce greater relative support for the latter policy set. However, no significant effects emerged, suggesting that information about educational inequalities does not undermine meritocratic beliefs in a Dutch context.