Financialization and Class Politics

Class Politics in Financialized Economies: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1983-2019

Abstract: Economic rents in the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) industries have grown significantly in recent decades, but their distribution among different classes of workers within this sector has been uneven. In this study, I examine the implications of these distributive patterns for attitudes toward key economic policies, such as government efforts to reduce inflation, unemployment, and poverty. Using large-scale survey data from the UK, I find that individuals employed in the FIRE sector are more likely to support policies that protect financial rents compared to those employed in non-FIRE sectors. Furthermore, an individual’s class position—defined in terms of their ownership, authority, and skills—significantly moderates this sectoral difference in attitudes, even after accounting for personal income levels. Specifically, sectoral differences in attitudes are larger among owners, managers, and skilled/professional workers than among unskilled workers. I conclude by discussing how these differences may affect class political alignments in highly financialized economies. Revise and Resubmit, Socio-Economic Review.

Locked Out: The Political Economy of American Homeownership, 1985-2022

Abstract: In recent decades asset prices have grown faster than inflation and wages in many advanced economies, particularly in the English-speaking world. Some scholars argue that asset ownership, especially homeownership, now plays a more significant role than employment in determining income inequality and disparities in life chances in these countries. This begs the question of whether asset ownership is an increasingly important political cleavage. Using data from the General Social Survey, I track changes in attitudes toward government redistribution and welfare spending, partisan identification, and voting for Republican presidential candidates in the US by homeownership status. I find evidence for a substantial divergence in the attitudes of homeowners and non-owners over the past several decades, explained in large part by declining conservative attitudes among non-owners. In addition, growing political cleavages by homeownership status are not strictly an elite phenomenon but are evident across income levels and aggregate classes defined in terms of business ownership, workplace authority, and skill. Furthermore, attitudinal differences by homeownership status largely match or exceed those between these aggregate classes in the US today.