How Children and Adolescents Think About, Make Sense of, and Respond to Economic Inequality: Why Does It Matter?

Research published in the special section documents how children's and adolescents' awareness and sensitivity to group-level exclusion, inequality of opportunity, and broader patterns of economic inequality in society influence and are associated with moral emotions, moral reasoning, and decisions about resource allocation. It also assesses the intersecting influence of societal hierarchies on youth's understanding of economic inequality and the socioemotional and behavioral correlates of their discernment of structural arrangements that produce inequality and marginalization. These advances in knowledge raise several interesting issues, among them (a) when during the life course explanations of poverty and distributive justice reasoning crystallize; (b) whether distinct developmental trajectories exist in these domains; (c) whether early patterns of moral emotions, reasoning, and decision-making shape interactions with less economically advantaged peers and predict subsequent attitudes and behavior pertaining to social justice issues; (d) the role of educational experiences and parental socialization in youth's understanding of structural causes for group inequalities; and (e) whether and why structural thinking about inequalities may be domain-specific (e.g., race, social class, income, gender).