Characteristics of the Status Identity and Consumption of the Middle Class

Abstract

The article examines the dynamic of the middle class based on materials of nationwide surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences. It finds that Russian society has become a society of a mass lower-middle class. It offers an assessment of the possibilities and necessary conditions for the expansion of the middle class in Russia. It finds that the numerical dominance of positions that are peripheral to it in the composition of the middle class is conditioned by the model of the Russian economy, in which the percentage of positions of professionals, managers, and entrepreneurs is relatively low. It demonstrates that the Russian middle class is characterized by specific stratal identities, making it possible to speak of the beginnings of the formation of a class consciousness in it. It cites characteristics of the lifestyle and consumption of the middle class. It finds that while retaining a significant separateness from other Russians in the period from 2003, members of the middle class were characterized by a worse dynamic of indicators in Russia. The nucleus of the middle class were in the least well-off position.

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2015 “Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia.” “Osobennosti statusnoi identichnosti i potreblenie srednego klassa,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 2015, no. 1, pp. 44–54.

Natal'ia Evgen'evna Tikhonova is a doctor of sociological sciences, professor, research professor at the Higher School of Economics National Research University, and chief science associate at the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Translated by Kim Braithwaite. Translation reprinted from Sociological Research, vol. 54, no. 5. doi: 10.1080/10611428.2016.1257897.

^1. This article uses data from nationwide surveys conducted by the Institute for Comprehensive Social Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, in 2000–2014, under the direction of M.K. Gorshkov (Gorshkov and Tikhonova, 2004, 2014; Tikhonova, 2014).

^2. For a description of the methodology used to discern the middle class, see M.K. Gorshkov's article in this issue of the Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, pp. 35–44 [see this issue of Sociological Research, pp. 367–383—Ed.]. A description of the sample of the survey titled “The Middle Class in Today's Russia,” (2014) is given in the same place, p. 36 [pp. 368–369 this issue].

^3. The ISSP is an annual international program of surveys covering topics that are important to the social sciences. From one year to the next the topic of the survey changes, but once every five to eight years in the context of this program surveys are carried out devoted to the problems of social structure (for more detail see www.issp.org). This article has used data from the ISSP-2009 wave.

^4. The model was constructed as follows: the percentage values of the number of those who chose the corresponding score were laid out along the ordinates axis (because the positions of status are oriented vertically), and after that, to give the figure symmetry, they were laid out in mirror image fashion in the field of negative values. Then, to maintain the proportions the model was “narrowed” by two times along the abscissa axis.

^5. The data for Germany and Great Britain are cited from the European Social Survey (ESS) for 2012; for more detailed information about this survey, see www.europeansocialsurvey.org. The data for Russia have been calculated on the basis of official statistics, see www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/wages/labour_force/#; and www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/population/trud/trud10.xls.

^6. What was meant by the nucleus of the middle class in the survey were Russians with a higher education who were employed in the economy as managers, professionals, and entrepreneurs.

^7. All the professional groups (with the exception of professionals—that is, specialists working in positions that require a higher education) that belong to the potential middle class have a lower level of education than the same groups in the middle class do. In addition, the members of the potential middle class also, generally, have cultural capital that is considerably worse than that of the representatives of the periphery of the nucleus of the middle class, because their primary socialization took place in a different environment (a rural area, or a parental family with a low educational level).

^8. ESS data for 2012.