# **5 Main results**

Table 3 reports the summary results of an ordered probit regression using data from the 1999-2001 wave. In column 1 we use country dummies for individual countries (the country coefficients are too numerous to be shown), Column 2 distinguishes the postsocialist economies as a group from other comparator countries, and Columns 3 and 4 classify post-socialist economies into three groups as discussed above. Measures of goodness of fit suggest that our regressions perform as well as the existing literature.

Beginning first with the impact of personal characteristics we see that employment status, gender, education, income are generally significant and in the direction consistent with the literature across all specifications. For example, the unemployed are more likely to prefer greater equality or greater redistribution while the self-employed (individuals who can be typically assumed to be less risk averse) prefer greater inequality. Those with relatively low (high) income also prefer greater (lesser) equality. Similarly, individuals with lower (higher) educational attainment prefer greater (lesser) equality.

We now turn to our main research question. We find that there is limited evidence of a socialist legacy in attitudes to equality as typically understood in the literature. When we use individual country dummies (Table 3, Column 1), we find that some countries prefer greater, some less, and some as much inequality as the benchmark country (U.S.), controlling for all other independent variables. This is consistent with Wong’s (2004) previous finding, based on the 1990 wave of the WVS. Turning next to post-socialist countries as a group (Table 3, column 2) we find that they do _not_ display a greater preference for equality than the benchmark group (advanced economies). In fact, they show a stronger preference for inequality than advanced economies. Disaggregating further however reveals differences across the different sub-groups of post-socialist economies (Table 3, column 3). Countries in Central and Eastern Europe do in fact display a stronger preference for equality than advanced economies. But countries in the former Soviet Union show a greater preference for inequality. This is the case with both the Baltics and the rest of the former Soviet Union. The relative size of the coefficients suggests, however, that the preference for inequality is weaker in the Baltics than in the remainder of the former Soviet Union. Thus the Baltics fall in between the patterns observed in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Another interesting finding is that preference for inequality in the former Soviet Union (excluding the Baltics) is _stronger_ than in developing countries as a whole.

We now turn briefly next to the impact of income inequality (as proxied by the Gini coefficient) and the average income per capita (Table 3, Column 4). Although this analysis is for a slightly smaller number of countries due to issues of data availability, the results suggest that firstly, including these additional country level factors does not overturn our basic conclusions, and the geographic pattern to preference for equality is upheld. Secondly, lower measured inequality is significantly associated with greater preference for equality, as hypothesized in section 3, but there is no measurable statistical link between income per capita and preferences for equality.

It is possible that these findings across the different geographical groupings are driven by differences in the level of confidence in the effectiveness of governments' 12