POLS 4790 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Cherry Picking, Class (Education), Themselves
18 Mar 2019
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Document Summary
Early social science greatly concerned itself with class. Few scholars were studying it as a concept. Most were cherry picking single dimensions of class (e. g. education, occupation) It was rarely a strong predictor of any important behavior. Income easy to quantify, hard to collect (especially at the tails) Occupation easy to name, but hard to categorize. Failure to study many classes across the spectrum. Assuming class is a concept used to define and conceptualize economic inequalities, rank the four components of class on their utility in measuring this concept. Instead of many dimensions, let"s combine them in to one measure. Unclear how their combination maps to outcomes. Everyone here is at a roughly similar class measure with respect to one measure of class (education). Big picture: despite other contentions, subjective class does correlate with objective class in clear and expected ways. Traditionally, focus on how people earn their money or where their money comes from.
