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.