Social Class, Work-Related Incomes, and Socio-Economic Polarization in Europe, 2005–2014

Sociologists and economists have typically focused on different dimensions of socio-economicinequalities. Sociologists have been mainly concerned with occupational and educational indicators,whereas economists have focused on the earnings, income, and wealth distribution. The article inte-grates sociological and economics’ approaches to the study of socio-economic inequalities, by provid-ing an analysis of the relationship between social class and work-related income, and its distribution,in Europe in the period between 2005 and 2014. Europe as a whole and its eight major countries arestudied with the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-Silc) data. Changesin the income hierarchy among classes are discussed in the framework of the occupational upgradingand polarization hypotheses. The results of our analyses suggest that, first, the capacity of the conceptof social class to describe and summarize the different distribution of individual market-related in-come is stable or increasing in Europe. Second, in the 10 years considered there has been a ‘fanningout’ of the class income hierarchy. With reference to upper social class, the increase in the incomegap has been stronger for the self-employed and the routine workers. Finally, there is also evidence ofa mix of occupational upgrading and polarization. The empirical results, in particular, are consistentwith the predictions of the skill-biased technological change hypothesis.