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This article investigates for European societies the contextual conditions and social stratification of status seeking, defined as the desire to increase one’s rank in the social hierarchy and thereby to gain prestige. We explore diverging assumptions about (a) the level of status seeking across societies and (b) the social gradient of status seeking within them, derived from three prominent sociological theories: the income inequality thesis sensu Wilkinson and Pickett, the post-materialism thesis sensu Inglehart, and the status competition thesis sensu Bourdieu. We employ representative, high-quality data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2018 for more than 45.000 individuals in 29 countries, which we analyse in a multilevel framework. We find evidence that socioeconomic development dampens status seeking while income inequality is less influential. Within societies, a higher rank in the stratification system, in particular a more favorable occupational class position and higher income, are associated with stronger status seeking. While our results for contextual conditions match post-materialism theory best, the results for social gradients conform best to status competition theory. Both findings question the current dominance of the inequality thesis as the stepping stone into status seeking research.

Who values status seeking? A cross-European comparison of social gradients and societal conditions