I use a nationally representative survey to determine whether and which Americans associate personal responsibility with economic desert. Philosophers actively debate this relationship, but social scientists routinely take it for granted, foisting this assumed relationship on the people they study. Respondents, I find, generally want their economic fates to rest on criteria for which they are (or appear) personally responsible, but they express this belief with varying levels of conviction and with two notable exceptions. The first involves specific determinants of economic status. Respondents are divided on whether individuals exert control over their intelligence, creativity, health, and educational pedigree, but they are generally comfortable with the first two affecting peoples’ economic standing. The second concerns who considers personal responsibility morally relevant to economic status. Neoliberals, chiefly concerned with economic growth, are significantly less insistent that individuals be personally responsible for their economic standing. Same for non-white, lower income, and older respondents, and respondents from elite schools, though to a lesser degree. At best, ideal paths to economic success and ruin are moderately associated with personal agency, though many are weakly correlated. So it goes with respondents’ overall correlations between perceived control over economic determinants and the ideal-importance of those factors to economic standing. Researchers must look beyond their preferred philosophical dispositions and investigate justice as it is envisioned and lived by their subjects.

中文翻译：

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或多或少赢得我们的位置：社会经济地位中责任与沙漠的灵活关系

我使用具有全国代表性的调查来确定美国人是否以及哪些美国人将个人责任与经济沙漠联系起来。哲学家们积极讨论这种关系，但社会科学家通常认为这是理所当然的，将这种假设的关系强加给他们研究的人。我发现，受访者通常希望他们的经济命运取决于他们（或似乎）个人负责的标准，但他们表达这种信念的信念程度各不相同，但有两个明显的例外。第一个涉及经济地位的具体决定因素。受访者对个人是否对自己的智力、创造力、健康和教育血统施加控制存在分歧，但他们通常对影响人们经济地位的前两者感到满意。第二个问题涉及谁认为个人责任在道德上与经济地位相关。主要关注经济增长的新自由主义者明显不那么坚持个人对其经济地位负责。非白人、低收入和年长的受访者以及来自精英学校的受访者也是如此，但程度较低。充其量，经济成功和毁灭的理想路径与个人能动性适度相关，尽管许多相关性较弱。因此，它与受访者对经济决定因素的感知控制与这些因素对经济地位的理想重要性之间的总体相关性相符合。研究人员必须超越他们偏爱的哲学倾向，并调查他们的受试者所设想和生活的正义。