Wealth as a Distinct Dimension of Social Inequality

Recent sociological research tends to move beyond the divide between economics and sociology in the study of socioeconomic inequality. It focuses primarily on the relationship between social class and work-related income. Yet, it has been shown that wealth, rather than income, was the decisive feature of contemporary inequality and that wealth and income increasingly tend to be captured through the same households. To bridge the gap between the two disciplines and provide a comprehensive understanding of socioeconomic inequality, this article developed an integrated analysis of wealth and income distribution among occupational groups at different ages in five major European countries. To that end, we used the Household Financial and Consumption Survey [2014 wave] of the European Central Bank network.

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Social class and wealth inequality in Italy over 20 years, 1993–2014

Dagnes

Filandri

Storti

2018

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

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Italy is facing its worst economic crisis since the Second World War. As many studies have already shown, the crisis is affecting the country's social class structure, thus accentuating several inequality tendencies. In this connection, the empirical purposes of the paper are twofold: i) to analyze whether accumulation and inequality in wealth are growing or declining in absolute terms; ii) to investigate the relationship between social class and wealth inequality. To this end, we adopt a longitudinal approachviz., we take the 1993-2014 period into account by using data from the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Our findings suggest that overall net worth has trended down in the years following the beginning of the crisis (since 2010), and that inequality in wealth has basically been increasing during the twenty-year period, with a decline from 2012 on. However, there has been no persistent social splitting process in wealth distribution by social class. Rather, there is a high (and increasing) level of domestic differentiation in terms of household wealth by class, mainly within the lower class and self-employed middle class, which could put further stress on social cohesion standards and allow new forms of social vulnerability to emerge.

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Wealth as a Distinct Dimension of Social Inequality

Cited by 9 publications

References 213 publications

Wealth and Well-being in the United States

Wealth and Well-being in the United States

Class and relative wealth accumulation in five European countries: Sociological Lessons from the Household Financial and Consumption Survey (European Central Bank, 2014 Wave)

Social class and wealth inequality in Italy over 20 years, 1993–2014

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