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Class

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The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
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Abstract

The structure of inequality has historically been represented with an income paradigm that treats well-being as adequately indexed by income alone. By contrast, the class-analytic tradition treats inequality as fundamentally multidimensional, with such variables as health, education and social relations all deemed important nonincome constituents of well-being. These variables may assume a class-based form in which social groups within the division of labour define characteristic constellations of scores. The class model is further supported in so far as class membership has true causal effects on behaviours that are not reducible to the effects of income or other correlates of class.

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© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

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Grusky, D.B. (2018). Class. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_156

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