Meritocratic beliefs are often invoked as justification of inequality. We provide evidence on how meritocratic beliefs … are shaped by economic status and how they contribute to the moral justification of inequality. In a large-scale survey …. Exploiting exogenous variation in meritocratic beliefs in a two-stage analysis shows that beliefs affect how much inequality …

-)distribution decisions, suggesting that people view parental influence as a legitimate reason to justify some inequality. This can explain …