The Spirit Level Theory developed by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett claims that low-inequality societies are better societies because people are plagued less by status anxiety, and previous research has largely supported this idea. With the aim of broadening the knowledge about status anxiety, this article examines a crucial component of status anxiety – the feeling of not counting much in the eyes of others – within a multilevel framework for 27 European countries, using the European Quality of Life Survey 2011/2012. We first clarify which individual characteristics in particular result in status anxiety: labor market exclusion and low-income position. Second, influenced by the seminal work of Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction, we explore a societal condition of status anxiety that appears to be particularly salient due to its visibility in everyday life: cultural class divisions. Our evidence suggests that the extent of class divisions in cultural consumption fuels status anxiety, over and above the effects of income inequality and national affluence. Thus, we advocate a sociocultural redirection of the Spirit Level framework.

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The goal of this study is to explore the relationship between culture and social well-being, focusing on inferiority feelings. While being respected is widely seen as a key ingredient of a good life, inferiority feelings signal a lack of esteem from others. Previous research has mainly looked at income inequality as the key contextual condition for inferiority feelings and other status concerns, often inspired by the income inequality thesis/Spirit Level paradigm (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). We contribute to this discussion by extending this paradigm into the cultural realm. Our main assumption is that an inegalitarian culture breeds inferiority feelings, whereas an egalitarian culture dampens them and in this sense is "better". Within a multi-level framework we combine information on culture, operationalized as collective values and beliefs, retrieved from the European Value Study for 30 European countries, and survey data on inferiority feelings for over 37,000 individuals from the most recent European Quality of Life Survey (2011-12). Our evidence suggests that widespread self-expression values and social trust (as expressions of an egalitarian culture) are indeed better as they dampen individuals' inferiority feelings while widespread individual blame for poverty (an expression of an inegalitarian culture) heightens them. In further analyses of each income quintile separately, we find evidence that culture mattersfor good or worse-for all income groups, except the poorest quintiles. Our results should prompt scholars of social status and social well-being to pay more attention to the impact of culture.

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