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How Do Wealth and Attitudes Towards Wealth Distribution Correspond? Contrasting and Complementary Typologies Based on Objective and Subjective Measures from the Hfcs.
How Do Wealth and Attitudes Towards Wealth Distribution Correspond? Contrasting and Complementary Typologies Based on Objective and Subjective Measures from the Hfcs.
Tuesday, 12 July 2016: 16:45
Location: Hörsaal 48 (Main Building)
Oral Presentation
Recent studies show the unequal distribution of wealth among Austrian households, a diagnosis that certainly holds not only for Austria. A sociological question in this markedly economically led debate is, how the distribution of wealth corresponds to attitudes towards wealth and its social distribution. The data of the European Household and consumption survey (HFCS) improved the data base for wealth research substantially. The HFCS data comprises detailed information on income, wealth and debts of national probability samples of households of the Eurosystem as well as sociodemographic, educational and occupational information on the household members. Beside the household's real and financial assets that are surveyed in detail a number of attitudes i.a. towards the social distribution of wealth, justice, self estimation of the social position, risk and trust were measured.
Robust cluster analysis algorithms were used to construct eight household types according to the household's specific combination of wealth of different types (Reinprecht, Paulinger 2015). Attitudinal dimensions were extracted via factor analysis of a nine item battery measuring attitudes towards wealth distribution and the question how to become rich. The FA yields three independent factors that explain 41% of the total variance, interpretable as (1) "pro/contra equality", (2) "rich by personal merit", and (3) "rich by inheritance". In a following step different attitudinal types of households were clustered from the resulting factor scores. As a result the objective wealth types do not show major statistical significant differences on these three single dimensions, however the association between wealth type and attitudinal type is significant (Chi²-Test, p<0.05). While in wealth types with lower total wealth attitudes of "pro equality" are overrepresented, and attitudinal types with pronounced meritocratic dimension dominate the wealthiest types. The picture is not completely coherent, since there is a differentiation especially in respect to the "personal merit" dimension at middleclass households.
Robust cluster analysis algorithms were used to construct eight household types according to the household's specific combination of wealth of different types (Reinprecht, Paulinger 2015). Attitudinal dimensions were extracted via factor analysis of a nine item battery measuring attitudes towards wealth distribution and the question how to become rich. The FA yields three independent factors that explain 41% of the total variance, interpretable as (1) "pro/contra equality", (2) "rich by personal merit", and (3) "rich by inheritance". In a following step different attitudinal types of households were clustered from the resulting factor scores. As a result the objective wealth types do not show major statistical significant differences on these three single dimensions, however the association between wealth type and attitudinal type is significant (Chi²-Test, p<0.05). While in wealth types with lower total wealth attitudes of "pro equality" are overrepresented, and attitudinal types with pronounced meritocratic dimension dominate the wealthiest types. The picture is not completely coherent, since there is a differentiation especially in respect to the "personal merit" dimension at middleclass households.