Rich people, surrounded by other rich people, think America is richer than it really is

The Washington Post:

Economic segregation has some obvious consequences for how we live. It means that poor and rich children attend different schools, that their parents shop in different stores, that their families rely on separate amenities, whether parks or transit lines or community pools.

These living patterns, though, also have harder-to-see political consequences. They mean, as new psychology research confirms, that the rich and poor have skewed views about each other — and that, as a result, the rich may be less likely to support programs for the poor.

This finding comes from a study in Psychological Science by Rael Dawtry and Robbie Sutton at the University of Kent, and Chris Sibley at the University of Aukland (kudos to them for the paper’s title: “Why wealthier people think people are wealthier, and why it matters”). In an online survey, they asked more than 600 Americans to estimate the incomes of the people in their social circle as well as in the U.S. population at large.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post