A Decline in the Social Status of the Working Class? Conflicting Evidence for 8 Western Countries, 1987–2017

Abstract

The consensus view among political scientists is that the subjective social status of low-skilled workers has declined over the last decades, and this status loss of the working class is seen as contributing to the rise of the radical right. We examine the micro-foundation of this claim by tracing the evolution of subjective status for different social classes in Europe and the US. We use all available survey rounds of the International Social Survey Programme 1987–2017 and replicate findings with the European Social Survey 2002–2016. While unskilled workers perceive their status to be lower than members of the middle class everywhere, we find no relative or absolute fall in their subjective social status over time. Unskilled workers were at the bottom of the status hierarchy in the 1990s and 2010s. Our findings throw doubt on the narrative that sees workers’ falling subjective social status as a prominent driver behind the rise of the radical right.

Occupational skills and subjective social status

“…However, parts of the broader literature alluded to above posit that not only absolute social status but also temporal shifts in relative social standing are consequential for 'status anxiety' and other outcomes, such as political preferences. There are a few recent studies on trends in social status among occupational groups over time that show mixed results (Gidron and Hall, 2017;Kurer, 2020;Oesch and Vigna, 2021;Nolan and Weisstanner, 2022). A promising area for future research would be to explicitly incorporate educational requirements and/or type of work (e.g., the manual/nonmanual divide) into the analysis of ongoing shifts in status inequality in advanced knowledge economies and beyond.…”

“…Yet the significance of occupations for the social status of individuals has scarcely been the subject of multivariate studies. While a few studies examine how subjective social status varies between a small number of 'big' occupational classes (Gidron and Hall, 2020;Oesch and Vigna, 2021;Nolan and Weisstanner, 2022), there is a lack of studies on how subjective social status varies in a larger set of more detailed occupational groups in relation to the type and level of skills required in different jobs.…”

Subjective social class has a bad name, but predicts life chances well

“…4. 1992 low-status, all see themselves near the middle of the subjective status ranking" (Kelley & Evans, 1995: 166, see also Oesch & Vigna, 2022).…”

The Occupational Roots of the Cultural Anti-immigration Backlash: The role of specific skills and labor market context

“…The final step of the theoretical argument to be tested is whether the proposed effect also works for explaining subjective social status. To capture this dimension, I use a question from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the only survey that repeatedly asks a question about social status (Gidron and Hall, 2017;Kurer, 2020;Oesch and Vigna, 2021). Specifically,…”