Data of the form generated by OECD is important for comparisons - along
with UN, Euorstat etc. but of course we have major definitional
problems. However, the definitional problems reflect underlying social
transformations of some significance. So, during what Hobsbawm called
the fortunate third quarter of the twentieth century for 'advanced
industrial nations', households - a key unit here rather than
individuals - with one member or more a skilled or unionized industrial
worker and in the UK in particular but also to some extent elsewhere a
woman working in a unionized welfare state job or industrial job,
acquired considerable material resources in the form of owner occupied
suburban dwellings and decent pension entitlements which gave them a set
of social conditions which would certainly have been thought of as
'middle class' before the second world war - as Hobsbawm says when
communist intellectuals from London went up to Coventry in the early 50s
they found the industrial comrades had cars! In fact we have seen an
emmiseration - good word that - of generations after those of us born
in the late 40s early 50s. Those generations get much less in terms of
personally acquired assets although they may inherit a bit. So there is
a sense in which a Weberian middle class is being emmiserated across the
generations.
David Byrne
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