| Abstract [eng] |
Globalization, technological change and regulatory reforms have made a major impact on labor markets and people‘s incomes over the last decades. Along with current social and demographic tendencies, these changes have led to the growth of social inequalities across Europe. The rich have become richer and existing institutions and policies are no longer able to successfully deal with growing poverty. Inequality and social exclusion have a negative impact on both societies and their individual members. It prevents individuals, groups and societies from making their own decisions that affect their lives. Societies with high inequalities are said to have slower economic growth, poorer health and lover levels of happiness. When it comes to inequality in European societies, Lithuania in not an exception. Despite the positive economic changes in Lithuania over the last few years, inequality and social exclusion remain a problem. Social inequality is the result of the distribution of goods and burdens in society. How objective inequality is assessed depends on people’s attitudes towards distributive justice and the principles of redistribution. Inequality is considered to be as legitimate as it meets, inter alia, society's expectations of how resources should be allocated. These expectations vary both between members of the same society and between different societies. People may evaluate the same objective social inequality differently. Given the nature of the inequality problem and the challenges that Lithuanian and the rest of European societies face or will face in the future, it can be argued that empirically based knowledge of people's attitudes towards distributive justice is essential to ensure the right choice of policies. And while in theory these topics are extensively explored, there is a lack of research on what people actually think. For this reason, this thesis aims to answer the question of what the attitudes of the Lithuanian population towards a fair income and a fair society are and to compare it with other European countries. Therefore, the object of this final degree project is the subjective attitudes of the Lithuanian population towards a fair income and a fair society. The aim of the final degree project - to investigate the Lithuanian population subjective approaches to distributive justice in the European comparative perspective. In order to achieve the goal of the final project, 3 tasks were set: 1) to examine the theoretical aspects of the perception of distributive justice and a just society; 2) to review social policy measures to ensure distributive justice in Lithuania; and 3) to empirically analyze the subjective attitudes of the Lithuanian population towards distributive justice and a just society in a comparative European perspective. In order to implement the set tasks in the master's final project, the analysis of scientific literature was performed, and the method of secondary quantitative data analysis was used. imagine a just society as one in which everyone strives for their own well-being and in which their efforts are rewarded accordingly, and individualism dominates in public relations. At the same time, however, society feels a duty to care for its weakest, most vulnerable members and to ensure that their most basic needs are met. The study revealed that both in Lithuania and in Europe, many people believe that their income and that of other people engaged in the same activity is incorrectly low. However, the situation in Lithuania is worse than in many European countries. The study highlighted the fact that certain groups of society in Lithuania suffer more than others and these differences are more apparent than in other European countries. All this reflects certain problems of Lithuanian society, the scale of which is greater in Lithuania than in many other European countries: poverty of people of retirement age, regional exclusion and the pay gap between men and women. The study also showed that wealth inequality is considered unfair to many people across Europe, including Lithuania. However, in Lithuania it is considered that the income of the lowest earners is incorrectly low, but it is not considered that the income of the highest earners is incorrectly high, which is not typical for other European countries. This allows to assume that a large redistribution of wealth in Lithuania would not be strongly supported. The work consists of 4 parts: the analysis of scientific literature, the review of social policy measures to ensure distributive justice in Lithuania, the presentation of research methodology and the presentation of empirical research results. |
