Is Income Inequality Related to Tolerance for Inequality? Martin Schro ¨der 1 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Abstract Data from the International Social Survey Programme that includes individual respondents from 34 countries surveyed at four different times show that populations of countries with more actual income inequality also tolerate more income inequality, even after controlling for numerous individual- and country- level variables. Comparisons over time show that actual income inequality predicts later tolerance for income inequality, within 3–4 years, but earlier tolerance for income inequality does not predict later actual income inequality. These analyses therefore indicate that people adapt how much income inequality they tolerate to actual inequality. They contribute to a long-standing theoretical and empirical discussion about whether material structures influence or result from social norms. Keywords Moral norms Á Redistribution Á Income distribution Á Social policy Á Income inequality Á Social norms Á Multilevel model Introduction Do people tolerate more inequality when more factual income inequality exists? One might think that fair and actual inequality are unrelated, as income inequality follows functional needs, instead of what people think is fair. However, people might adjust their views about fair inequality to the inequality that they find to exist, so that views about fair inequality follow actual inequality after all. Even the opposite pathway is conceivable: More tolerance for inequality might contribute to a smaller welfare state, which leads to more actual inequality. & Martin Schro ¨der martin.schroeder@uni-marburg.de; http://www.schroedermartin.com 1 Philipps-University Marburg, Institute of Soziology, Ketzerbach 11, 35037 Marburg, Germany 123 Soc Just Res DOI 10.1007/s11211-016-0276-8