Lifestyles, Status, and Inequality

Why do people spend a lot of time and money on maining a socially visible lifestyle? This project collects new survey data to quantify the social status associated with different lifestyles. For example, does going to an opera yield higher status than going to a flea market? Furthermore, it uses survey experiments to measure the effect of an individual's lifestyle (opera vs. flea market lover?) on others' perceptions of the individual, for example perceptions of social class position, employability, friendliness, and trust. The overall ambition of the project is to shed new light on the mechanisms through which lifestyles act to enhance social inequality.