Whether people justify and challenge economic inequality depends on the activities of social movements

When do people challenge economic inequality and when are they more likely to accept it? Whether people justify inequality is key to challenging or accepting it, but research is inconclusive on how objective economic inequality is related to individuals' justification of inequality. In the present research, we propose that social movements play a key role in framing inequality as unjust so that higher inequality is seen as less just. Our study focused on Chile, a relatively affluent but highly unequal country and we examined whether local income inequality was related to individuals' beliefs depending on local labor movement activities. Using survey data from 1886 participants across 64 municipalities, our results showed that municipal-level income inequality and labor movement activities jointly predicted individual-level justification of inequality, and indirectly also predicted support for collective action. When either very low or very high local levels of income inequality were coupled with less intense labor movement activities, individual justification of inequality was higher. Justification of inequality in turn predicted less support for the labor movement as a measure of collective action to challenge income inequality. The findings highlight the importance of social movements, such as the labor movement, in framing inequality as unjust.