A study co-authored by DPhil student Giacomo Melli argues that individuals who perceive themselves to be of low social status display more support for the redistribution of wealth within society.
The paper focused on ‘subjective social status’ – an individual's self-perceived position within the social hierarchy, relative to others – rather than their objective social class, education, income or occupational status.
Subjective social status is important to study, as there is often a noticeable mismatch between how people perceive their social standing and their actual social class.
For example, when asked to place themselves on a ten-point ladder representing the social hierarchy, over 11% of individuals in the Higher Managerial Class placed themselves on the lower rungs of the social ladder, while a similar proportion of Working Class members considered themselves at the top.
Giacomo’s study explored the relationship between this perceived social status and attitudes towards government redistributive policies, which seek to reduce economic inequalities within society.
Subjective social status is a powerful predictor of attitudes towards wealth redistribution.
The study used International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data for twenty-five countries across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania between 1987 and 2019.
Individuals were asked their opinions on whether those with high incomes should be taxed more than those on lower incomes, and whether it was the responsibility of the government to reduce income inequalities.
Results showed that individuals with lower subjective status displayed higher support for taxing the wealthy and redistributing income, independent of their objective social class.
However, the paper found that context played a significant role in the opinions of individuals with higher subjective social status.
In countries with limited economic inequalities, support for redistributive policies was highly stratified, with more support from individuals with a perceived lower social status, and less support from those with a perceived higher status.
However, in countries with larger income and economic inequalities, people showed roughly the same level of support for redistributive policies, regardless of their subjective social status.
This suggests that, in highly unequal countries, individuals who feel they are above most of the population display pro-redistribution attitudes in line with the rest of the population.
The paper concludes:
Globally, these results reinforce the relevance of subjective social status as a central predictor of socio-political outcomes.
By showing that contextual structural inequality moderates these relationships, these results reaffirm the sociological perspective of individuals as agents embedded in different social structures.
