Wealth, power, and status are distributed unevenly across social groups. A surge of recent research reveals that people being recognizing, representing, and reasoning about group-based patterns of inequity during the first years of life. We first synthesize recent research on what children learn about group-based social hierarchies as well as how this learning occurs. We then discuss how children not only learn about societal structures but become active participants in them. Studying the origins and development of children’s thoughts and behavior regarding group-based social hierarchies provides valuable insight into how systems of inequity are perpetuated across generations and how intergroup biases related to wealth, power, and status may be mitigated and reshaped early in development.

财富、权力和地位在不同社会群体中的分配不均。最近的大量研究表明，人们在生命的最初几年中认识、代表和推理基于群体的不平等模式。我们首先综合了最近关于儿童对基于群体的社会等级制度的了解以及这种学习如何发生的研究。然后我们讨论孩子们如何不仅了解社会结构，而且成为其中的积极参与者。研究儿童关于基于群体的社会等级制度的思想和行为的起源和发展，可以提供宝贵的见解，了解不平等制度如何在几代人之间延续，以及如何在发展的早期减轻和重塑与财富、权力和地位相关的群体间偏见。