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In recent analyses of the class structure of Britain and other modern western societies, arguments have been advanced relating mobility patterns to class formation and modes of class action. Three specific theses-those of `closure' at the higher levels of the class structure, of a `buffer-zone' around the division between manual and non-manual occupations, and of `counter-balance' in rates of inter- and intragenerational mobility-are critically examined on the basis of a survey inquiry into occupational mobility carried out in England and Wales in 1972. The sources of the various discrepancies which emerge between the three theses and the results of the enquiry are discussed, and major importance is attached in this respect to the evolution of the occupational division of labour in Britain over recent decades.

In this article, we return to Max Weber's distinction between class and status as related but different forms of social stratification. We argue that this distinction is not only conceptually cogent, but empirically important as well. Indeed, class and status do have distinct explanatory power when it comes to studying varying areas of social life. Consistent with Weber's assertions, we show that economic security and prospects are stratified more by class than by status, while the opposite is true for outcomes in the domain of cultural consumption. Within politics, class rather than status predicts Conservative versus Labour Party voting in British general elections and also Left-Right political attitudes. But it is status rather than class that predicts Libertarian-Authoritarian attitudes.

The authors discuss the problem of overdispersion in large-scale data sets and its potential impact on standard model selection strategies. Overdispersion is considered to be present when the data display more variability than is predicted by the assumed sampling model. In a recent cross-national analysis of social mobility, data were combined from nine national studies that employed somewhat different sampling schemes and related data collection procedures. Ignoring these features of the data is quite likely to introduce excess dispersion. Typically, the presence of overdispersion can be due to design effects, hidden clusters, or the absence of relevant explanatory variables in the model. When there is overdispersion, model selection based on the standard likelihood ratio test, the Akaike information criterion, or the Bayesian information criterion generally would be expected to perform poorly. A very simple adjustment to these model selection criteria, to account for overdispersion, is proposed.

Par réaction contre une analyse trop rapide qui le faisait dépendre avant tout de l'influence des penseurs et des hommes d'action qui ont guidé l'opinion, les historiens de l'après-guerre ont interprété le développement de la politique sociale britannique au XIXe siècle comme une réponse nécessaire de la société aux problèmes sociaux posés par l'industrialisation. Cette analyse «fonctionnaliste» est très insuffisante et doit faire place à une étude plus sérieuse des objectifs et de la stratégie des groupes en présence.

In this paper, we seek to contribute to ongoing discussions of the relationship between income and class in analyses of social inequality and mobility. We argue that while class has sometimes been taken as a proxy for long-term earnings levels, it is of greater importance, at least when treated in terms of the EGP schema or the European Socio-Economic Classification (ESEC), in capturing differences in age-earnings trajectories. Moving beyond previous single country studies, we examine how far the theory that underlies ESEC is reflected in men's age-earnings trajectories across 14 European countries, while also taking into account any effects of their educational qualifications. Modelling data from the 2017 EU-SILC survey, and focussing on men's full year/full-time equivalent gross annual earnings, we find that although the age-earnings trajectories that are estimated for different classes do reveal some cross-national variation, there are major features, of a theoretically expected kind, that are evident in our pooled sample and that regularly recur in individual countries. Class differences in earnings are at their narrowest for men in the youngest age group that we distinguish but then widen across older age groups. This occurs primarily because the earnings of men in the professional and managerial salariat, and especially in the higher salariat, show a marked rise with age, while the earnings of men in other classes rise far less sharply or remain flat. We also find evidence that these diverging trajectories are primarily shaped by individuals' class positions independently of their level of educational qualification - however important the latter in determining the class positions that they hold. What can be regarded as the logic of different forms of employment relations lead to a large degree of cross-national commonality in the association that exists between class and earnings at different ages.

El análisis de clase ha sido criticado recientemente desde varios puntos de vista. En este artículo sostenemos que mucha de esta crítica está fuera de lugar y que, en cuanto programa de investigación, la promesa del análisis de clase está lejos de agotarse. La primera parte del artículo clarifica la naturaleza y el propósito del análisis de clase, tal y como lo entendemos, y en particular lo distingue del análisis de clase de la sociología marxista. Luego la segunda parte defiende la relevancia actual del análisis de clase, en nuestra concepción de éste, revisando hallazgos de tres áreas centrales de investigación en curso.