Mens & Maatschappij - Volume 100, Issue 2, 2025

This paper reflects on the impact of the Great British Class Survey, hosted by the BBC from 2011 to 2013. I argue that its intense appeal lay in the ability to crystallize three separate trends in one piece of research. These are (i) the problems of relying on a single variable definition of class, such as one based on employment and occupation; (ii) the growing significance of wealth and property as a central driver of 21^st century class relations; and (iii) the inherent intersectionality of class with multiple other divides, notably around race and gender. The Great British Class Survey both undercut occupationally based models of class analysis that had become hegemonic during the late 20^th century, and offered a template for a new multidimensional approach to class analysis. I consider how these multidimensional perspectives on class are being strengthened through the important shift towards centering wealth and property as the 21^st century bedrock of class relations.

In recent years, the debate on social inequality in both academia and politics has focused heavily on differences in income and wealth, the transformation of labor markets, and the nature of meritocracy in advanced capitalist societies. This article looks beyond that, using a framework of four types of resources: economic, cultural, social and person capital (the combination of someone’s health and attractiveness). A dedicated survey was linked to microdata from national registers in the Netherlands, resulting in a dataset with expanded and more refined indicators than in previous work. Latent class analysis identifies seven distinct social classes. The working upper echelon (19.9% of the Dutch adult population) has the most capital, followed by privileged younger people (8.6%), the leisured upper echelon (12.2%), the employed middle echelon (24.9%), low-education pensioners (18.1%), insecure workers (10.0%), and the precariat (6.3%). These class distinctions are to some extent coupled with intersectionality. Multinomial logistic regression suggests that age, ethnic background, and household composition are significant predictors of class membership, while gender has a more limited impact. Addressing these inequalities requires a three-pronged policy strategy, involving investments at key life transitions, institutional complementarity across policy domains, and welfare policies based on targeting within universalism.

Income inequality typically measures dispersion across populations, while analyses of other welfare dimensions focus on group differences. This study applies population-wide dispersion analysis to non-income dimensions of the level of living, comparing their trends with income inequality patterns. Using Sweden’s Level-of-Living survey data from 1968-2010, we analyzed inequalities in health, education, social relationships, civic participation, victimization, and residential space using mean average difference (MAD), relative mean average difference (RMAD) and concentration measures. Our findings challenge the assumption that non-income inequalities mirror income inequality trends. Only social relationships and participation showed partial alignment, with absolute gaps smallest during periods of low income inequality. Our results suggest that income inequality trends should not be automatically considered indicative of broader societal inequalities.

Sociological theorizing has largely equated people’s personality with the social context in which they find themselves, neglecting a large body of work in psychology. This exploratory study examines how personality traits, as measured by the HEXACO model, are related to multidimensional inequality in the Netherlands. Using a large representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 6,773), we analyzed the relations between the six HEXACO traits and different forms of resources (economic, cultural, social, person, and total capital), as well as social class and people’s place of residence. All personality traits predicted at least one form of inequality, with extraversion and openness to experience showing the strongest and most consistent relations across all forms. People who scored higher on these traits tended to have more resources and belonged to higher social classes. These findings highlight the long-term consequences of individual differences in personality, and the importance of including personality traits in sociological and psychological research on multidimensional inequality.