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In a world with rampant social inequality, it’s an unfortunate fact that those who have are often treated better than those without.

A new study has now suggested that even one-and-a-half-year-old toddlers already show a preference for people they recognize as rich. They are also more likely to help wealthy people.

Toddlers aged 11 to 13 months and 14 to 18 months were compared in the study for both an ‘assisting job’ and an ‘evaluation task’. The slightly older age group (which included toddlers as young as 14 months old) consistently preferred wealthier people, whereas the younger age group (around one year) showed no preference in either the evaluation or the assisting assignment.

From this study, researchers were able to deduce some information about whether this impact stems from favouritism of the wealthy, or from a dislike of the poor. From the comparison with the younger age group, it appears to be the latter.

The one-and-a-half-year-olds were not more helpful towards, or more positive about, rich people than they were half a year ago. But they were less helpful and less positive when it came to poor people. So a more accurate take-home message of these studies might be that one-and-a-half-year-olds already show a bias against poor people.

So, this begs the question: Where do these attitudes come from?

One depressing take would be that this anti-poor bias is somehow innate – and no doubt some people will interpret the studies this way. But this is far from being the only or even the most convincing way of reading the results.

Between the ages of 14 and 18 months, children begin to distinguish between wealthy and poor people, which coincides with the onset of social cognitive abilities. Therefore, it makes far more sense to assume that toddlers’ attitudes about wealthy and poor people are shaped by the way their caregivers respond to both these groups. Compared to one-and-a-half-year-olds, one-year-olds are far less attentive to how their carers behave and interact with others.