A recent
New York Times story noted that perceived conflict between the rich and poor has increased since 2009. Although it said that "traditionally, class has been less a part of the American political debate than it has been in Europe," it didn't mention that the question it talks about has also been asked in a number of other countries as part of the
International Social Survey Programme. Actually, the ISSP includes four questions about conflict: poor people vs. rich people, working class vs. middle class, management vs. workers, and people at the bottom vs. people at the top. In principle, people might distinguish between these types of conflicts, but in practice they tend to rate them all the same way: if you think there's a lot of conflict between rich and poor, you probably think there's a lot between management and workers. If you add the scores together to get a general measure of conflict and take the average for each nation, here are the rankings in 1999 (the last time the questions were included in the ISSP), from most to least perceived conflict.
N mean
Chile 1362 0.91
Portugal 1092 0.77
Hungary 1035 0.60
Philippines 1168 0.47
Russia 1409 0.46
United States 1025 0.25
Poland 794 0.14
Slovenia 844 0.10
Great Britain 691 0.04
Latvia 944 -0.00
New Zealand 993 -0.01
Germany East 446 -0.08
Australia 1540 -0.11
Sweden 1026 -0.15
France 1746 -0.19
Slovakia 948 -0.23
Bulgaria 749 -0.25
Israel 1140 -0.26
North Ireland 709 -0.27
Czech Rep 1431 -0.31
Germany West 789 -0.32
Cyprus 920 -0.42
Norway 1103 -0.54
Austria 830 -0.55
Spain 1091 -0.61
By this measure, the United States ranks pretty high in perceived class conflict, sixth out of twenty-four. Britain, which is often seen as a class-bound society, is several spots behind. The Contentious French (in
Charles Tilly's phrase) rank below average. In fact, there are so many surprises that it's hard to see any pattern.
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