Justice
What Googling 'Ralph Lauren' Has to Do With Income Inequality
A new study finds that more people search online for luxury goods in states with higher income gaps.
The “social rank” theory says people use status goods to project their wealth: Louis Vuitton bags, say, or Cartier watches. According to this school of thought, that tendency should be even greater in places with lots of income inequality, where visible signs of wealth might serve as louder status signals. A new study, published in the journal Psychological Science, tests whether Americans react to inequality this way by examining what they search for on the Internet.
"We're not looking at what people actually purchase, but what they spend time looking for information about," says psychologist Lukasz Walasek of the University of Warwick, who co-authored the study.