Inspired by the wonderful blog, Just the Social Facts, Ma’am, I’m taking a look at a few attitudinal questions from the General Social Survey, comparing trends between the white working class (WWC) and white respondents with a college degree or more (the white credentialed class)?

Last time, I showed that polarization around the idea of hard work has been occurring since the 1990s, with the WWC increasing in belief of the importance of hard work while those with college degree remained relatively flat. Similarly, those with a college degree have really started to think that luck or help is important in getting ahead since 2016.

Here, I ask the question: to what extent do these attitudes vary across education/class divides, compared to differences in attachment to the labor market? For example, perhaps unemployed / decommodified WWC don’t buy into the idea of hard work, but more WWC folks are working over time. Thus, we might be observing shifts in views about success driven by employment patterns, not class patterns.

Briefly, I estimated similar multinomial logistic regression models as last time. I included an interaction with a three category variable: [1] working full/part time [2] unemployed [3] other (e.g. house-maker, retired, student). Because models blew up if I included year as a categorical variable, I experimented with different functional forms and found a cubic version of year to fit best. I interacted cubic year-by-class-by-employment category and plotted the probabilities.

First, let’s look at the probabilities of viewing hard work as the reason for success. Results are plotted separately for the WWC and those with a college degree.

Wow! Different things going on. Here’s what I see:

Most importantly, the WWC has converged in agreement that hard work is what gets one ahead. The unemployed had lower probabilities of viewing hard work as important until about 2010. Now, all three categories have similarly high levels.
While college educated workers have overall lower probabilities of “Hard work,” we see that employment categories began to diverge in their views around 2000. While employed individuals kept growing slightly in views of hard work, “other” and “unemployed” declined pretty substantially.
The groups didn’t look too different from one another through about, oh 2000? College / non-college employed looked pretty similar, college / non-college other looked pretty similar. Class differences really started driving attitudinal differences in the 2000s and onward.

So over time, the WWC has unified in views of hard work, while employment provides a wedge in views about hard work among those with a college degree.

What about luck or help? Let’s take a look at similar trends by education and employment.

I notice a few things:

A general decline across all categories from 1980 onward among the WWC, although the unemployed have higher probabilities in just about every time point.
In the last decade, 2010-2018, the highly educated unemployed have higher probabilities of “Luck/help” than the WWC unemployed. This is a reversal from earlier decades, where unemployed WWC were more likely to buy into the luck/help explanation than unemployed with a college degree.
There’s a break in trends among college educated employed / others following the great recession. From 1972-2006ish, higher and lower educated employed and other folks followed similar trends. Then, in 2008 onward, higher educated folks, regardless of (de)commodification status, have really bought into the luck/help explanation.

So what are the big take home points? I think that views of hard work or luck/help have become anchors of class mentality among white Americans, and that this is a recent phenomenon - beginning in the Clinton or Bush eras.

The view that hard work results in success clearly has taken on an ideological meaning. The trends before 2000 make more sense to me via a basic materialist explanation — e.g. if you’re working, you attribute success to hard work, while if you’re unemployed, you are not likely to base your lack of success in the labor market on your lack of hard work. The WWC appear to have really bought into hard work as an anchor of meaning, even among those who are especially down on their luck (e.g. unemployed).
Before, I noticed that higher educated workers separated in their view of “luck/help” in 2016. But apparently, this based on the consolidation of folks across employed / unemployed / other categories buying into a luck/help explanation following the great recession. I’ll need to look at that a bit more carefully and formally before making any final decision.
The 1990s / 2000s marks a massive divergence between the WWC and higher educated whites in terms of views of getting ahead. We see this in overall trends (part 1), as well as across employed/unemployed/other groups.

I think next I’ll look at subjective views of one’s economic conditions, how these have changed over time, and how they map onto views of success.