Social classes and consumption: a study on the expenses of Brazilian families based on the Household Budget Survey (2017-2018)

Abstract

The goal in this article is to investigate the association between social class and consumption. Based on the theoretical approach aiming to connect practice, dispositions and classes, consumption is seen as a privileged empirical instance to observe class-based social divisions. Are there homologies between the structure of family expenditures and social positions? Patterns of consumption are likely to differentiate social classes and their fractions in terms of the principles of differentiation operating in social space. Data used are derived from Household Budget Survey (2017-2018). Besides comparing relative mean expenditures on different items by social classes, descriptive exploratory techniques named Geometric Data Analysis will be used.