On the Aspects of Social Stratification

The reader has the results of an exciting and ambitious research enterprise at hand. Associates of the Division of Social Statistics of the Central Statistical Office, in co-operation with the Institute of Demography, have attempted to create and analyze a comprehensive model (or rather models) offering a many-sided description of the Hungarian society. They have continued with this work a series the elements of which have matured to become classics and linked to the name of Zsuzsa Ferge, Tamas Kolosi and Agnes Utasi. Building on not one but two different theoretical traditions Bukodi et al. present two kinds of schemes of stratification structure: one of them is based on position in the labour market and on occupation, and the other one distributes members of the society into groups by consumption and lifestyle. They publish the two different models one after the other, built on different databases, stressing that they supplement each other, and neither of them can be regarded ‘more valid’ than the other. The authors argue with the help of new international empirical results in support of the statement that the stratification schemes, based on occupation and the labor market have not lost of their significance to date, even though they may be regarded traditional and outdated by several authors. They consider the theoretical and methodological problems of the creation of this stratification typology, including the necessity of taking into account the relatively new social changes such as the large number of people present at the periphery of the labor market. After having listed the earlier and later attempts of Hungarian statistical practice to take the population into account on the basis of occupational structure, they present their own social-occupational stratification scheme (CSO–SOSS) the development of which can be understood from one of their earlier publications (Bukodi E. and Zahonyi M.: A tarsadalom retegzodese. Nepszamlalas 25. [The Stratification of the Society. Census 25.]