Shared User Resources

Shared user resources give access to resources or tools shared by the ESS user community. The resources are published here under the criteria that they have been included in peer-reviewed and published articles/publications. Their inclusion does not represent endorsement by ESS ERIC.

Any questions and/or possible contributions can be sent to ESS ERIC Headquarters (ess@city.ac.uk).

Social class schema - script to construct an indicator of social class in the ESS by Daniel Oesch

• Social class schema 2020 (zip): Codes in Stata, R and SPSS with descriptions
• "Coming to Grips with a Changing Class Structure: An Analysis of Employment Stratification in Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland": Daniel Oesch, University of Lausanne

Abstract: Over the last 30 years, trends such as service sector growth, welfare state expansion and rising female participation rates have promoted increasing heterogeneity within the occupational system. Accordingly, this article argues that the class map has to be redrawn in order to grasp these changes in the employment structure. For that purpose, it develops the bases of a new class schema that partly shifts its focus from hierarchical divisions to horizontal cleavages. The middle class is not conceptualized as a unitary grouping and the manual/non-manual divide is not used as a decisive class boundary. Instead, emphasis is put on differences in marketable skills and the work logic. The schema is expected to more accurately reflect the class location of unskilled service employees and to make visible the political divide within the salaried middle class. This expectation is empirically examined with survey data from Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Findings for earnings and promotion prospects indicate that the schema successfully captures the hierarchical dimension in the class structure. Moreover, results for party support and union membership suggest that the schema grasps a salient horizontal cleavage between managers and sociocultural professionals.

Keywords: class analysis ✦ class voting ✦ electoral sociology ✦ employment structure ✦ socioeconomic inequalities

essurvey R package by Jorge Cimentada

• Website
• GitHub repository

Description: The essurvey package is designed to download ESS data as easily as possible into the R statistical software. It provides helper functions to download rounds for all countries or for a selected country only and to show which rounds/countries are available on the ESS website. Documentation and examples are available on the package's website.