Abstract
AbstractSociological research often uses income as the only indicator to describe or proxy the group of the rich. This article develops an alternative framework in order to describe varieties of affluence as three-dimensional: depending on income, wealth, and origin of wealth. The relevance of such a multidimensional perspective for social outcomes is demonstrated by analysing the heterogeneity in political attitudes between different varieties of affluence. For this purpose, ordinary least squares regressions are applied to a sample from 2005, 2009, and 2014 German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). The main results are, first, that the perspective of varieties of affluence reveals significant differences in social outcomes as demonstrated by political attitudes. Especially wealth possession is related to significantly more right political attitudes. Second, there is strong explorative evidence that the rich in Germany should be regarded as a heterogeneous group. These findings are robust to influential data, multiple imputations of wealth data, and endogeneity due to pooled data. The article concludes, among other things, that more data are required to make more certain assertions.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been a shift in research on economic inequality from a primary interest in income to a focus on wealth
The increased interest in wealth and the traditional conceptualization of the affluent as those with high incomes raise the question whether ‘the affluent’ can be seen as a homogenous group in terms of their political attitudes. Is it sufficient to define them as only those with high incomes? To shed light on this question, heterogeneity among the affluent is analysed by asking two related questions: Do varieties of affluence matter? Are the rich in Germany a homogenous group in terms of their political attitudes? The analysis is based on survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), mainly for the years 2005, 2009, and 2014
The second step of the analysis is to look closer for heterogeneity among the rich only: those with either an income of at least 200 per cent of mean income or at least EUR 500,000 of wealth
Summary
There has been a shift in research on economic inequality from a primary interest in income to a focus on wealth. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate to what extent social phenomena can be explained by variation among three forms of affluence: position in the income distribution, position in the wealth distribution, and origin of wealth—self-earned versus not self-earned. Reasons to make such distinctions are numerous: possible social-structural differences between these groups include ambition, family background, ability, migration background, social class, saving behaviour, and age. The increased interest in wealth and the traditional conceptualization of the affluent as those with high incomes raise the question whether ‘the affluent’ can be seen as a homogenous group in terms of their political attitudes. Discussion section discusses the results, followed by a brief conclusion
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