Meritocracy and Birthrights

Title: Meritocracy and Birthrights

Abstract: I study fairness views regarding inequalities that arise from birthrights, entitlements acquired by virtue of being born into an advantaged group via the `birth lottery.' In Western liberal democracies, meritocracy is a powerful and widely supported normative fairness ideal, according to which individuals should be rewarded based on individual merit but not based on factors beyond their control. Yet, even in such societies, birthrights are widespread, raising the question of whether people perceive birthrights as a genuine basis for individual reward or whether they arise due to a lack of awareness of the role of luck in the birth lottery. I conduct two controlled online experiments using general samples of the US population and demonstrate that recognizing birthrights as a legitimate basis for unequal rewards is a feature of people's redistributive preferences. I also re-calibrate a model of optimal inheritance taxation by incorporating these fairness principles, demonstrating that this adjustment substantially reduces optimal tax rates, qualitatively aligning them with the low tax rates observed in practice. The central contribution of this paper is to provide a basis for the acceptance and persistence of birthrights - even in meritocratic societies.