Social stratification in sport: a matter of money or taste?

Results of sport participation studies refute the common belief that sport has become more egalitarian and democratic. Social distinctions in sport participation in general, and especially in participation in specific sport activities, have persisted over the years. In order to get a better understanding of this social stratification of sports, a socio-economic approach was decided on. The economic approach seeks to find out to what extent the social stratification of different sports can be explained by the economic variable: the price of sports (expenses). In the social approach, the ‘distinction’ theory of Bourdieu is used in order to find out whether different structures in the capital volume, that is economic capital (income) and cultural capital (education), may explain different tastes in sports. An empirical survey was set up in which the socio-professional status of fifteen different sports was analyzed in terms of their price on the one hand and their socio-educational and socio-economic status (income) on the other hand. For each sport, a representative group of 60 adult men was interviewed by means of questionnaire (N = 900). The results show no correlation between the socio-professional status pyramid and the price of sports (rho = -.01). The socio-professional status pyramid shows a very high correlation with the socio-educational level of the sports (rho = .98) and a high correlation with the socio-economic status (rho = .81). The results show very little evidence for a so called economic explanation of the social stratification in sports, rather a more socially based explanation. Moreover, the cultural capital (socio-educational status) seems to provide a better explanation of the social stratification in sports compared to the economic capital (socio-economic status).