Can cultural consumption increase future earnings? Exploring the economic returns to cultural capital

Abstract

Abstract:Cultural consumption is often viewed as a form of embodied cultural capital which can be converted into economic rewards because such practices increase the likelihood of moving into more advantaged social positions. However, quantitative evidence supporting this proposition remains uncertain because it is often unable to rule out alternative explanations. Cultural consumption appears to influence hiring decisions in some elite firms, in both the U.S. and the U.K., but it is unclear whether these processes are applicable to other professional occupations and other labour market processes such as promotions. We examine these processes using data from Understanding Society, an individual-level panel survey conducted in the UK, allowing us to explore whether cultural consumption predicts future earnings, upward social mobility, and promotions. People who consume a larger number of cultural activities are more likely to earn higher wages in the future, to be upwardly socially mobile, and to be promoted. Cultural consumption, then, can function as cultural capital in some labour market settings, potentially contributing to the reproduction of income inequality between generations.* Replication materials are available here: https://github.com/asreeves/culture-income † Aaron Reeves and Rob de Vries are joint lead authors of this article, and both contributed equally. 1 ICultural consumption is correlated with social position (Bennett et al. 2009;Chan 2010). Across high-income countries, people who are highly educated, have higher incomes, and work in prestigious occupations are, on average, more avid cultural consumers than people in less advantaged social positions (Chan 2013;Jaeger and Katz-Gerro 2010;Peterson and Kern 1996).One common explanation for this homology between cultural consumption and social position presumes there are economic returns to participating in cultural activities (Bills 2003). Or, to be more concrete, consuming certain cultural products may increase the likelihood of moving into advantaged social positions and thereby increasing future earnings (Bourdieu 1984;Rivera 2011). Economic returns to cultural consumption may arise because these practices smooth access to advantaged social positions in situations where gatekeepers prefer people who are already similar to themselves (Tilly and Tilly 1998), allowing evaluators to recognise a candidate as 'one of us' . Likewise, gatekeepers may treat cultural consumption as a signal of other desirable traits that are valuable to firms, such as intellectual curiosity or creativity (Ridgeway and Fiske 2012). In these circumstances, as Bourdieu (1984) argued, cultural consumption becomes a particular manifestation of 'embodied cultural capital' . 1 Cultural dispositions along with the symbolic mastery of certain cultural forms generate patterns of cultural consumption and these practices, in turn, enable some (rather than others) to secure certain social and financial rewards (Bourdieu 1986). It is precisely the 'convertibility' 2 of cultural consu...

Cultural stratification in the UK: Persistent gender and class differences in cultural voraciousness

“…While women in general and, in particular, women at the bottom of the class scale, remain most disadvantaged in terms of access to cultural participation, high level managerial women appear to have caught up with equivalent men. This is an important finding in the context of recent research showing that consuming certain cultural activities increases the likelihood of workplace opportunities and plays a role in predicting future earnings, controlling for family background, education and other traits (Reeves and De Vries, 2019). The finding of both continuity and change in the relation of cultural voraciousness to class and gender could be seen as evidence for two major features of cultural stratification that have been discussed in the literature.…”

“…To conclude, if a voracious pattern of cultural engagement is not mainly a result of income, or objective or subjective pressure of time, we can rely on the literature summarised above to provide a cultural explanation: it gives high status consumers the opportunity to continue to emphasise and display status through their leisure participation (simultaneously feeding the imperative of late capitalism for increasing high-value service consumption – see Sullivan, 2008). Generally, the homology between cultural consumption (voraciousness) and social position (gender and class) indicates a variety of economic and social returns to cultural consumption and the likelihood of attaining advantageous social positions (Reeves and De Vries, 2019). This conjecture is supported by the process of polarization we observe: since 1998 professional men have relatively increased their voraciousness scores to ‘lead the pack’, with higher-level female managers equalling or even exceeding those of equivalent men.…”

“…Even more rare have been studies that looked at the way class and gender interact to shape cultural consumption (Katz-Gerro, 2006). Given that the convertibility of cultural consumption into financial rewards and other life outcomes may partially overlap with gender (Jarness et al, 2019; Reeves and De Vries, 2019), the intersection of cultural capital, class and gender is central to discussions of the mechanisms through which inequality is reproduced.…”

Distinctions in the making: A theoretical discussion of youth and cultural capital

“…So even if the extent of deference towards high culture from those dispossessed of it may have fallen from the time of Distinction , this culture may still be important for elite inheritors. If it remains recognised in socially consequential spheres, it might confer an advantage, influencing not only success at school but possibly also hiring or promotion decisions (Reeves and de Vries, 2019), allocations of stipends, informal access to powerful circles, etc.…”

Where Do Cultural Tastes Come From? Genes, Environments, or Experiences

“…In contemporary sociology, cultural tastes and participation, for example, with regard to activities, music, and literature, have been argued to be instrumental in defining personal identity (Featherstone 1991), symbolic meaning (Bryson 1996), and group boundaries (Lamont and Molnár 2002). Tastes and participation also help define the social space (Bourdieu 1984), how non-monetary assets convert into monetary assets (Reeves and de Vries 2019), and why inequality persists over generations (Jaeger and Breen 2016).…”