Beliefs About Income Inequality and Policy

Last registered on April 09, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Beliefs About Income Inequality and Policy
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018212
Initial registration date
April 05, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 06, 2026, 9:38 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
April 09, 2026, 3:58 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Danlei Huang
Affiliation
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-04-06
End date
2027-04-30
Keywords
Behavior, Labor, Welfare
Additional Keywords
income inequality, income distribution, redistribution, beliefs, perceptions, minimum wage, survey experiment
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study examines how people think about income inequality and whether these views differ across individuals with different mindsets about its causes. It measures respondents’ perceptions of the income distribution, related economic beliefs, and views about fairness and inequality. Using a randomized survey experiment, the study tests whether different kinds of information and policy-related prompts affect these beliefs and whether responses vary systematically between more individualist and more structuralist respondents. The project aims to better understand how mindsets shape perceptions of inequality and belief updating.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Huang, Danlei. 2026. "Beliefs About Income Inequality and Policy." AEA RCT Registry. April 09. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18212-2.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Respondents are randomly assigned to different survey conditions that provide different types of information or policy-related prompts about income inequality. These interventions are designed to examine whether exposure to such materials affects respondents’ perceptions of income inequality, related economic beliefs, and views about fairness, and whether these effects differ across respondents with different mindsets about the causes of inequality.
Intervention Start Date
2026-04-06
Intervention End Date
2027-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Respondents’ perceptions of income inequality, measured through their reported income distribution and the implied subjective Gini coefficient.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The subjective Gini coefficient is constructed from respondents’ reported shares of the population across income brackets. These responses are used to create an individual-level measure of perceived inequality.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
This study is an online randomized survey experiment on mindsets about income inequality. Respondents are assigned to different survey conditions that provide different information or policy-related prompts concerning income inequality. The study examines whether these conditions affect perceptions of income inequality and related economic beliefs, and whether responses differ across respondents with different mindsets.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Respondents are randomly assigned at the individual level to one of the survey conditions using the survey platform’s built-in randomization procedure.
Randomization Unit
Individual respondent.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
2,100 individual respondents.
Sample size: planned number of observations
2,100 respondents.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
700 respondents in the control arm, 700 respondents in the factual-information arm, and 700 respondents in the policy-information arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Sub-Panel on Social Science & Humanities Research Ethics (Human Participants), Panel on Research Ethics, Research Committee, University of Macau
IRB Approval Date
2026-03-23
IRB Approval Number
HE-1519-2026
Analysis Plan