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Can economic inequality threaten liberal societies? This question lies at the heart of the ERC-funded POLAR project led by Prof. Markus Gangl, a sociologist at Goethe University Frankfurt. Several publications examining different aspects of the issue shed light on how trust in democracy, belief in meritocracy, and perceptions of equal opportunity are changing.
A widely discussed study by Dutch sociologist Jonathan Mijs, now a lecturer at Boston University, examined how rising economic inequality affects belief in meritocracy – the idea that success is determined by individual effort and achievement. Mijs found that as social inequality increases, confidence that hard work pays off also grows. For many sociologists, the opposite might seem more intuitive, and the findings sparked considerable debate within the academic community.
Working with his supervisor Markus Gangl, doctoral researcher Sven Ehmes set out to replicate these findings using his own data. However, they were unable to reproduce the original results and instead found evidence of the opposite effect: when the gap between rich and poor widens, belief in meritocracy declines. Their study was accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Socio-Economic Review, whose editorial board includes Jonathan Mijs. The Dutch sociologist congratulated them on their findings.
The key difference between the two studies lies in their analytical approach: Mijs took respondents’ experiences of social mobility into account, while Ehmes and Gangl focused exclusively on respondents’ current socio-economic status. “In essence, we examined how citizens typically respond when they observe increasing inequality in their society, whereas Jonathan Mijs inadvertently addressed a different question: how respondents perceive meritocracy depending on whether they themselves experienced social mobility under conditions of low or high inequality,” explains Markus Gangl. The findings suggest that in highly unequal societies, personal success is more likely to be interpreted as the result of individual effort, thereby reinforcing belief in the meritocratic system.
Markus Gangl has been Professor of Sociology, with a focus on social structure and social policy, at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2011. In 2019, he secured a prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his project “Polarization and its Discontents: Does Rising Economic Inequality Undermine the Foundations of Liberal Societies?” – abbreviated as POLAR. The €2.5 million grant funded the project from April 2020 to September 2025. According to Gangl, one of the project’s greatest strengths was its duration, which provided sufficient time to build a robust and comprehensive database. Together with his team, he consolidated survey data from more than 30 Western countries covering the period from 1980 to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is a single, extensive database containing more than five million records. Such a level of data integration would be difficult to achieve under normal academic conditions. The database enables unprecedented longitudinal analyses across multiple areas of research. It also benefited Gangl’s team directly: five researchers were able to complete their qualification theses using the data.
Polarization and Trust Shaped by Levels of Inequality
Another study focused on polarization, a phenomenon that has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Cristian Márquez Romo, Simon Bienstman, and Markus Gangl examined how rising inequality influences perceptions of social conflict. While earlier studies showed that people in countries with greater income inequality tend to perceive social divisions more strongly, the Frankfurt researchers incorporated changes over time into their analysis. They demonstrated that increases in income inequality lead people to perceive societal conflicts more intensely. This effect can be observed across almost all social groups – with the exception of the upper middle class – and contributes to greater polarization.
Previous research has also shown that rising income inequality can erode trust in democratic institutions. Simon Bienstman, Svenja Hense, and Markus Gangl investigated the mechanisms behind this relationship. They found that people living in comparatively unequal societies are more likely to feel that they have little political influence and that policymakers do not listen to their concerns. As a result, trust in politics declines and feelings of political powerlessness increase. While this pattern appears across the political spectrum, the effect is stronger and more immediate among left-leaning individuals, for whom reducing inequality is a central political objective.
Another study, currently under review, explores how rising inequality affects partnership and marriage markets and whether people become more likely to remain within their own social circles when the social climate becomes harsher. The researchers expect to have an answer to this question next year.
You can download a portrait of Markus Gangl here: Link setzen
Caption: How does growing economic inequality impact society? This is the question Prof. Markus Gangl and his team have been exploring as part of the ERC project POLAR. (Photo: Uwe Dettmar/Goethe University)
Prof. Dr. Markus Gangl
Institute of Sociology
Phone: +49 (0) 69 798-36633
E-Mail: mgangl@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
Ehmes, Sven, and Markus Gangl (2026). The Paradox of Inequality that Isn’t: Rising Economic Inequality Depresses and Polarises Citizens’ Belief in Meritocracy. Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag016 (Open access)
Márquez Romo, Cristian, Simon Bienstman, and Markus Gangl (2026). Increasingly polarized? Inequality, prosperity, and perceived socioeconomic conflict in advanced economies (1987–2019). European Sociological Review 42 (3): 387-404. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf052 (Open access)
Bienstman, Simon, Svenja Hense, and Markus Gangl (2024). Explaining the ‘democratic malaise’ in unequal societies: Inequality, external efficacy, and political trust. European Journal of Political Research 63 (1): 172-191. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12611 (Open Access)
How does growing economic inequality impact society? This is the question Prof. Markus Gangl and his ...
Source: Uwe Dettmar
Copyright: Goethe University Frankfurt/Main
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How does growing economic inequality impact society? This is the question Prof. Markus Gangl and his ...
Source: Uwe Dettmar
Copyright: Goethe University Frankfurt/Main
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