The widest gap of inequality is seen and said to be between social classes. It’s always the case of anyone above middle class remains better off in most aspects of life. We see it everywhere, on the news, on television programs and greatly in politics. In this blog I will be featuring how social class impacts political engagement and I will be addressing the possible reasons that could lead to these apparent inequalities.

It is often difficult to have a clear understanding of who falls under working class and who falls under middle class, which is why there has been an introduction of ‘Social grades’. Social grades are represented by 6 categories ranging from casual and lowest grade workers, unemployed with state benefits to higher managerial, administrative and professional jobs – As better shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Social grading. (via National Readership Survey)

The top two grades, A and B, are typically classed together making up 27% of the population. The same is true with the bottom two grades, D and E, making up 25% of the population. It is interesting to see then that the difference in voting numbers of two almost equally sized groups of the population is significant as shown in figure two below.

Figure 2. Turnout for 2015 and 2017 General elections based on social grade. (data via IPSOS Mori 2015, 2017)

The data shown in figure 2 shows without a doubt there is a difference in the political engagement of the different social grades. Further evidence to support this is given by Castillo, 2014, stating “Empirical evidence has consistently shown that political participation is positively related with socioeconomic background. Furthermore, recent research suggests that children who come from low status families are already less willing to get politically involved.” (Castillo et al., 2014). These findings are incredibly interesting and bring rise to the question of why? Why does an individual’s socioeconomic background impact their interest and engagement with politics?

Key factors which stood out to me regarding this question were upbringing and the schooling system. Firstly, when we are raised we pick up a lot of our parents interests, and our parents teach us a lot about the world we live in. Now the socioeconomic background of our family can be seen, as shown above to have an impact on people’s interest in politics, I believe the reason behind this is that people belonging to lower social grades lose interest in politics and in the government too as the government doesn’t do enough to make society a bit more balanced. We see a lot of policies in place to help the higher social grade communities but they have a detrimental effect on the lower social grades. This would easily lead do disillusionment and a lack of trust in the leaders of the country who promise to look after each and every individual. After this trust is lost it is very hard to gain back and this filters down into the children too, meaning generation after generation more and more families would lose interest I politics due to this.

Secondly and possibly the most important factor is the schooling system. Although citizenship education is compulsory in schools, it is not necessarily taught in the same way in different schools. (Hoskins, Germen & Melis, 2017). Schools are free to choose how to implement this form of education and it is notable that different schools teach different civic virtues to different kinds of children (Ben-Porath, 2013). Additionally, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds appear to have significantly less access to highly important ways of learning political engagement compared to their more advantaged peers. These ways of learning such as debate clubs and student councils are usually voluntary and the choice made to join them may be heavily influenced by an individual’s existing interest and knowledge regarding politics. (Hoskins, Germen & Melis, 2017).

So what can be done to resolve some of these issues especially in the schooling system? Hoskins, Germen & Melis, 2017 suggest that other forms of political and citizenship education should be implemented and made compulsory in every school.  They believe that getting teachers to encourage students from less advantaged backgrounds to stand for positions in school council will have a profound impact in regards to reducing political inequalities. i think that the ideas presented here are actionable and beneficial. what are your thoughts?

Bibliography

Ben-Porath, S. (2013). Deferring virtue: The new management of students and the civic role of schools. School Field, 11(2), pp.111-128.

Castillo, J., Miranda, D., Bonhomme, M., Cox, C. and Bascopé, M. (2014). Mitigating the political participation gap from the school: the roles of civic knowledge and classroom climate. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(1), pp.16-35.

Hoskins, B., Germen Janmaat, J., Melis, G., Tackling inequalities in political socialisation: A systematic analysis of access to and mitigation effects of learning citizenship at school, Social Science Research (2017), doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2017.09.001.

IPSOS Mori (2015) How Britain Voted in 2015 available at https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2015 (Accessed 2 March 2019)

IPSOS Mori (2017) How Britain Voted in 2017 available at https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2017-election (Accessed 2 March 2019)

Nrs.co.uk. (2019). Social Grade | National Readership Survey. [online] Available at: http://www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/lifestyle-and-classification-data/social-grade/ [Accessed 2 Mar. 2019].