The Demographic, Social and Regional “Profile” of Peoples’ Perceptions of Their Social Class: Evidence from the Seventh Wave of the World Values Survey, 2017–2020

Classifications form the basis for data collection. In the literature, social class is considered as a multidimensional concept, determined by income, education, employment and various lifestyles variables. However, although its theoretical basis is agreed upon, this does not hold true for its measurement as in many instances it is treated as identical to socioeconomic status. As “respondents’ perceptions of social class, while generally shaped by income, are not entirely consistent with strict income-based definitions of social class”, the self-perceived question included in the World Values Survey (WVS) questionnaire serves as a more encompassing measurement classifying respondents into five class categories: upper, upper middle, lower middle, working and lower class. In this respect, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the demographic, social and regional “profile” of people’s perceptions of their social class. The analysis is based on the 2017–2020 WVS datasets for seven countries: Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia and the United States. The findings showed that people perceive themselves as belonging mainly to the lower middle class (Cyprus, Germany, Serbia and the United States) and working class (Greece, Romania, and the Russian Federation). For all countries, statistically significant results were obtained for the following variables: marital status, level of educational attainment, employment status and income. Also, statistically significant results were obtained for age in all countries except Germany and for gender only in the case of the United States. Moreover, the regional results were statistically significant for all countries.