Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2ER, United Kingdom.
Brasenose College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AJ, United Kingdom.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Apr 12;119(15):e2115196119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2115196119. Epub 2022 Apr 8.
Regional inequality is known to magnify sensitivity to social rank. This, in turn, is shown to increase people’s propensity to acquire luxury goods as a means to elevate their perceived social status. Yet existing research has focused on broad, aggregated datasets, and little is known about how individual-level measures of income interact with inequality within peer groups to affect status signaling. Using detailed financial transaction data, we construct 32,008 workplace peer groups and explore the longitudinal spending and salary data associated with 683,677 individuals. These data reveal links between people’s status spending, their absolute salary, salary rank within their workplace peer group, and the inequality of their workplace salary distribution. Status-signaling luxury spending is found to be greatest among those who have higher salaries, whose workplaces exhibit higher inequality, and who occupy a lower rank position within the workplace. We propose that low-rank individuals in unequal workplaces suffer status anxiety and, if they can afford it, spend to signal higher status.
区域不平等会放大人们对社会地位的敏感性。反过来，这又会促使人们倾向于购买奢侈品，以提升自己的社会地位。然而，现有研究主要集中在广泛的综合数据集上，对于个人收入水平与群体内不平等如何相互作用影响地位信号，人们知之甚少。我们使用详细的财务交易数据，构建了 32008 个工作场所同伴群体，并探索了与 683677 个人相关的纵向支出和工资数据。这些数据揭示了人们的地位消费、他们的绝对工资、他们在工作场所同伴群体中的工资排名以及他们工作场所工资分配的不平等之间的联系。在那些工资较高、工作场所不平等程度较高且在工作场所中处于较低职位的人当中，地位消费表现出最大的奢侈品消费。我们提出，在不平等的工作场所中处于低等级的人会感到地位焦虑，如果他们有能力负担，就会花钱来显示更高的地位。
