About this session

Friday, 4:40 PM - 6:10 PM

Young Children's Understanding of Wealth, Poverty and Redistributive Justice

This symposium addresses young children’s understanding of wealth, poverty and
redistributive justice. The papers come from Germany, the United States and
Singapore. They are all relevant to the world as the number of billionaires grows each
year in the economically developed world and beyond, while levels of poverty across
both developed and developing countries remains stubbornly high (circa 20% of the
population). Studies of children’s understanding of poverty and wealth has been
studied from diverse perspectives including questions about whether wealth is due to
essential characteristics of the wealthy, passed on from generation to generation, or is
wealth due to social construction where change is possible if society changes? The
presentation from Singapore explores this essentialism versus social constructionist question.
The other two presentations from German and the USA address the question of how
children feel and think about a Robin Hood action, where someone takes form the rich
and gives to the poor. Do children regards this as a ‘good’ (redistributive)action or a
‘bad’ (stealing) action. The German presentation shows that infant-mother attachment
(security) makes it likely that 5-6 years later will endorse or approve of the Robin Hood
action. The presentation from the USA reports similar findings to the German study
as 5–8-year-old children who shows signs of secure attachment (with the Attachment
Story-Completion Task) are at once more likely to approve of the Robin Hood action,
and they are more likely to endorse a charitable intention by donating some or all of
their ‘prize’ money.

Paper #1
Title	How Attachment Representations and Emotional Availability Impact Children’s Punishability Judgment of Robin Hood
Presenting author	Samuel Essler, Ph.D., : Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany

Paper #2
Title	Attachment and Robin Hood: Are Securely Attached Children More Likely to Endorse Robin Hood Actions?
Presenting author	Howard Steele, Ph.D., The New School for Social Research, United States

Paper #3
Title	Influences of Age, Gender, SES, and Parental Ethnotheories on Singaporean Children’s Wealth Essentialist Beliefs
Presenting author	Yue Yu, Ph.D., Centre for Research in Child Development, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University Singapore Centre for Character and Citizenship Education, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

View all paper details

Session chair
Howard Steele, Ph.D., The New School for Social Research, United States

Discussant
Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, Ph.D., University of Lisbon, Portugal

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