Abstract
This article aims at verifying the findings of Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) which point to a strong correlation between the income gap and the escalation of social problems. Wilkinson and Pickett’s thesis states that all kinds of social problems are directly connected to the scale of social inequality in a given country. This article tests this concept by analysing the relation between the income gap in a particular country and the cultural activity of its citizens. The study assumes that low cultural activity can be defined as a social problem in modern European knowledge societies that are based on cultural industry. This relation is investigated in 22 European Union countries. The study demonstrates that there is a strong correlation between cultural activity and the scale of social inequality. In egalitarian countries the cultural activity is high, in highly stratified countries it is low.
Introduction
The latest research on cultural consumption (Jenkins, 2006), which shows an increase in cultural activity (e.g. readership of books, purchase of music) and ‘creative processing’ in the Internet era, opposes other research that reveals very low cultural activity (i.e. consumer/formal cultural institutions activity) in many European countries such as Greece. Also, the recent studies of cultural activity in post-Communist countries such as Poland (Szlendak, 2009) show that the dramatic decrease in readership, interest in theatre or in modern art results in almost only the ‘chosen’ inhabitants of the largest cities reading, visiting exhibitions and participating in classical music concerts (i.e. the relatively young, better educated, well-off, or better educated pensioners with time to spare, though without financial resources). Such findings lead to the conclusion that the ideas of the apologists for Culture 2.0 (in which cultural and creative activity is expanding and will continue to expand to become the most crucial sector of economy in the post-industrial countries) cannot be generalized, or that their assumptions cannot apply to all nations, even within so-called western culture. Indeed, in some western countries, cultural activity is developing, whereas in others it seems to be ‘contracting’.
It is difficult to explain why cultural and artistic activity (even Internet or ‘amateur’ activity) flourishes in certain places while in others it remains at a surprisingly low level – as evidenced by the few artists being granted prestigious scholarships, by low numbers of theatre goers or low readership. The reason why in some European countries relatively few citizens are involved in artistic activity, there is low cultural activity as assessed by book readership or concert and exhibition attendance, and few people are employed in the ‘cultural sector’, while in other countries those indicators remain high is a phenomenon that cannot be easily accounted for.
Conventional attempts to explain this situation lead to the conclusion that countries lack appropriate artistic education or that the career-focused busy citizens lack the time for theatre or reading books. Scientific intuition also suggests that other contributory factors play a role, such as mass education in a country, its citizens’ financial status (especially the percentage of middle-class citizens with set, so-called highbrow tastes), or the percentage of people inhabiting the larger urbanized versus rural regions. The conditions of artists and art galleries seem to be determined by the same factors. The more educated, well-off people with a set artistic taste (developed during socialization and a specific education) there are in a nation, the higher the incomes of painters, art galleries and auction houses. Furthermore, spontaneous artistic activity and the reception of works of art are hindered by digital exclusion: the lack of broadband Internet, cultural capital and the necessary skills to access and reinterpret works of culture available in the vast Internet archives, or a common shortage of financial resources. It would seem that the effects of digital exclusion could be eliminated simply by providing Internet connection and supplying people with appropriate intellectual competencies. For books and albums to start to sell well immediately, it would suffice to connect potential consumers to the Internet.
Nevertheless, the issue is perhaps neither the lack of leisure time nor even the number of prospective recipients, i.e. the well-off, educated middle classes with an Internet connection. There are probably completely different factors determining the increase or decline in cultural activity within a society. A possible answer might be that high social inequality generates low cultural activity. Perhaps cultural and artistic activity develops wherever social inequality is low as indicated by slight income differentials, but not where there is a powerful, though small, privileged elite. Similarly, perhaps it is that low cultural activity occurs wherever people attempt to advance their social status in the ‘traditional’ way, i.e. by focusing on the acquisition of material symbols of prestige. This is exactly what happens in highly income-differentiated countries, thus perhaps high income inequality is correlated with low cultural activity. It would be interesting, therefore, to examine whether low cultural activity occurs in all highly stratified countries, and conversely high activity in the more egalitarian countries.
Upon a thorough consideration of the above issues, a number of questions arise: how many people are in fact involved in free artistic activity; and what does the cultural consumption look like, especially regarding the division between so-called high and low culture (let alone the apparently now unfulfilled postmodernist illusions and prophecies about levelling out the divide), in highly stratified and egalitarian countries, respectively? Perhaps the cultural sector in highly stratified countries produces, metaphorically speaking, ‘kitsch and spangle’ for the masses who lack financial resources. The following questions ought also to arise: what kind of music sells well in egalitarian countries and what in the highly stratified ones (in relation to the number of inhabitants); where does the music of Rihanna and Britney Spears sell best, and where the classical cantatas of Cecilia Bartoli or acid-jazz; are the tastes more sophisticated in egalitarian than in highly stratified countries; does income egalitarianism in a population ‘refine’ tastes on a mass scale; does a wide income differential strongly differentiate citizens’ artistic tastes, limiting the access to works of ‘high art’ as status symbols only to the most well-off; does taste ‘refine’ on a universal scale in a country, the more egalitarian and less stratified it becomes; and is a decrease or increase in readership caused by the same factor and its two extreme effects: egalitarianism or stratification; is readership considerably higher in the egalitarian than in the stratified countries; and is the situation similar for the reception of art in galleries or in theatre attendance?
If the answer to all these questions is positive, then, although it might at first seem extremely utopian, an increase in cultural activity – a curse for the elite in many countries – could be achieved by social policy measures aimed at levelling the income differential and not, for example, through more efficient artistic education of the citizens. If it turned out that high social inequality limits cultural activity and has a negative effect on artistic activity by ‘blunting’ it, then a ‘lever’ could be built: levelling income inequalities by means of the taxation system could support cultural activity and creativity, and by supporting these, in turn, the inequalities could be ‘levelled’ (at least to a certain extent). Assuming that the above-mentioned mechanism actually works, funding and other means of supporting cultural and artistic activity would possibly reduce social inequalities by even creating various jobs within culture, its promotion and the services around the cultural sector. Supporting culture would actually serve as an instrument to avoid social exclusion. If the correlation between social inequality and cultural activity proved to be accurate, it would facilitate the understanding of difficulties encountered by various remedial and application programmes such as the EROC (European Regions of Culture), which, inter alia, postulates that the living conditions in economically deprived regions of Europe is improved via support and revitalization of their culture.
Wilkinson’s concept: The reconstruction of main assumptions and findings
The preceding discussion on how to ‘repair’ low cultural activity has been motivated by a concept which can hardly be referred to culture or artistic activity, or at least it was not created to explain the phenomena under investigation here.
The concept was created by Richard Wilkinson, who noticed that the health of entire societies is not the result of objective, measurable material life conditions but rather an effect of relative economic disparities among individuals within the same society or country (Wilkinson, 1996). Countries with a considerable income gap, and consequently, low levels of social equality and a low level of coherence, are characterized by an escalation of health problems, such as common obesity, or mental illness, such as depression. The state of health of citizens in ‘hyper-consumerist’ countries such as the United States and Great Britain, where the development of ‘casino’ capitalism has determined a very high income disparity, is worse than the state of health measured across the whole population in such countries as Sweden and Japan, where the income gap is significantly lower than in the USA or Great Britain.
The idea was most comprehensively presented in the book The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). The authors argue that income inequality, which has been widening due to the development of modern capitalism, is responsible for the escalation of social problems, which in turn translate into striking statistics: the number of prisoners, cases of mental illnesses, the rates of obesity or the number of people who have no trust in public institutions. The meticulously traced correlations between the scale of social inequalities and the percentage of prisoners, individuals of racist attitudes or teen pregnancies are so invariable (regardless of the data to which one might refer) that the authors are led to conclude that it is a causal relation applicable on a universal scale.
Wilkinson and Pickett claim that the key to understanding all kinds of social problems is not the actual level of poverty in a country or population (e.g. the extreme poverty rate), but the scale of social inequalities in the country, especially the gap between the first and the last quintile on the earnings scale. Wilkinson and Pickett prove that the wider the income gap between the wealthiest fifth and the poorest fifth, the greater the number of social problems: the more instances of obesity, the higher the infant mortality, the greater the numbers of prisoners and so forth, and what is most interesting and important in their concept, this is regardless of the ‘quality’ of poverty or wealth.
The income gap is both the indicator and determinant of the social stratification scale. The income differential in a country corresponds directly to the scale of its social problems. The wider the income gap is, the greater the scale of problems. Bearing these assumptions in mind, in another of their works (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2007), using United Nations Development Programme data from 2003, the authors analysed this situation in 24 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. The income inequality in these countries was measured as a ratio of the annual income of the poorest fifth to the annual income of the wealthiest fifth. That ratio varied from 3.4 in Japan (where the earnings structure is the flattest), to 9.7 in Singapore, the most stratified country in terms of annual earnings.
A detailed analysis of the data showed that whichever quality of life indicator is considered, the individuals from countries with a flattened income structure almost always manage better than those in highly income stratified countries. In other words, the societies that are highly stratified in terms of income distribution are socially dysfunctional on a number of levels and in many different fields, be it social mobility, instances of mental illness or the number of prisoners.
Wilkinson and Pickett measured social mobility using the correlation between the fathers’ and sons’ incomes (when the sons were approximately 30 years old). The higher the correlation between the incomes of fathers and sons was, the lower the level of intergenerational social mobility. Although Wilkinson and Pickett used data from just eight countries in this analysis: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada, Germany, the UK and USA, they noticed that the correlation between intergenerational social mobility and the income differential was statistically significant. Countries with the widest income gap (the USA and Great Britain) demonstrated also the lowest level of intergenerational mobility. In other words, in egalitarian countries with a low income gap such as Sweden, Finland and Norway, the social advancement of children is much easier and social status is not determined by birth (which is confirmed by the latest findings by OECD, 2008).
A similar relationship was discovered as regards prisoners and people with mental health problems. The highest number of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants was evident in the most highly income stratified countries, in the USA it was 576 and in Singapore it was approximately 350. Again, the most egalitarian countries, Japan, Finland, Sweden and Norway, demonstrated the lowest number of prisoners, around 50 per 100,000 citizens. The correlation between the income gap and the number of instances of mental illness, however, is the strongest, most transparent and most evident. In Japan, the least stratified country, mental illness affects only about 5% of the population, whereas in the extremely stratified USA it affects around 25%.
Cultural activity and social inequality: Potential correlations
Wilkinson and Pickett claim that the wider the gap between the haves and have-nots, the more attention is paid to the material aspects of consumption. The make of one’s car is of great significance in Australia and in the USA (both countries with a high income differential) but much less significant in Sweden or the Czech Republic (where the social inequality measured by the income gap is relatively low). The material aspects of consumption are the visible symbols of economic and social status in highly stratified cultures. Their absence means social uselessness or simply individual failure. Therefore, the authors claim, nobody wants to be in a group of people deprived of the proper status symbols.
The mechanism employed here is the reference group mechanism, known to the field of sociology since the Second World War, and a sense of relative deprivation. The issue in highly stratified societies is that individuals from the lowest income groups compare their earnings, lifestyle and their general situation not with people similar to them, but with people who earn the most within the population. Therefore, what is at play here is the mechanism discovered by Harvard economist and researcher into hyper-consumerism determinants in the United States, Juliet B Schor (1999). Since the mid-1970s, Americans have changed their reference groups, which has been accompanied by a growing sense of relative social disintegration. They no longer compare themselves in terms of their income and their status symbols with their next-door neighbours; instead, they compare themselves with the wealthy people they encounter at work or see in the media. The prominence of the media in modern societies has brought to everyone’s attention the lifestyles and the earnings of the rich. This very fact gives rise to a variety of problems for those who are unable to rise to the challenges of getting rich at any cost.
Metaphorically, it can be stated that people in egalitarian societies, such as Sweden or Japan, aspire to sense, while in stratified ones people strive for status. This accounts for the shortages in cultural activities in both economically developing and highly stratified countries. For example, Poland struggles with the problem of low readership and extremely low cultural activity. Certainly, in the light of Wilkinson’s concept, it is not a result of Poland’s post-rural background and the extremely weak local middle classes, which used to be the asylum of cultural activity in western countries. An increasing income gap and social inequality may have shifted people’s focus to other kinds of activities, such as the gruelling striving for high-status, material goods.
It could be hypothesized that in egalitarian countries where people ‘aspire to sense’ culture is consumed in a different way than in highly stratified countries where people ‘aspire to status’. The more egalitarian the country, the higher the sales of products of independent, non-commercial culture, created away from the corporations and centres of the so-called emotional industry, such as Hollywood. The higher the inequality assessed by the income gap indicators, the higher the sales of the products that may be called ‘opium for the masses’, i.e. simpler in form and content, intellectually unsophisticated, unchallenging and of a purely entertainment value. According to cultural anthropologists (Turner, 1982, 1983), it is no coincidence that both in medieval and in modern times carnivals were and are most intense where there was/is a fixed, impermeable social hierarchy, and where social advancement was/is extremely difficult to achieve due to the class system. In present-day Brazil, both the income gap and social inequality are very high (in 2005, the Gini index in Brazil was 56.7, whereas in Portugal, the most stratified country in Europe, the index for the same year was 41.0). The carnival here is, therefore, an attempt to ‘turn the world upside down’, i.e. to create a few days’ ‘fun revolution’ that allows people from the bottom of the social pyramid to question the validity of their social and economic disadvantage, just like the people in feudal Europe did 500 years ago. One interpretation suggests that carnival is a ritual which helps to ease social tensions and the more violent its form, the stronger the social tensions to be released must be.
Pierre Bourdieu (1998), having studied the tastes of both the ruling and working classes in France, showed that so-called highbrow taste is a marker of social status. What a society accepts as a manifestation of highbrow taste is usually a rare and expensive item, attributed to the ruling class. However, the latest research on the tastes of social classes in the West have concentrated on the category of people referred to as cultural omnivores. In the 1990s, it was observed that the contemporary elites (who are usually the educated members of the middle class), contrary to Bourdieu’s observations, demonstrated a fondness not only for the products of high culture, ‘acknowledged’ and ‘sanctified’, but also for the products of popular culture. The essence of cultural omnivorousness lies within the ‘some people like it all’ principle and represents an attitude that contradicts the snobbery attributed to the traditional perception of highbrow taste as a social status marker. Cultural omnivores enjoy both Miles Davis and trashy horror films, both contemporary literature and The Simpsons, both Pedro Almodovar’s films and the songs of Britney Spears. More detailed research on cultural omnivores showed that good taste remains a marker of high social status, although those omnivores possessing good taste show a far-reaching tolerance for different tastes and reject snobbery (Warde et al., 2007: 160). Another study suggests, however, that cultural omnivorousness refers only to people of high social status that is correlated with education (Holbrook et al., 2002). These from the upper class have a tendency to enjoy everything, both Wassily Kandinsky and Britney Spears, whereas those from the lower stratum like only Britney Spears. Omnivorousness is therefore a new marker of high social status. People from different social classes still differ in terms of taste, although the traditional mechanism of snobbery has in fact weakened.
Hence, there still exist class differences within aesthetic preferences, though in the egalitarian countries cultural omnivorousness is presumably more common (cultural omnivores relatively more numerous there) than in highly stratified countries. In those egalitarian countries that, according to Wilkinson and Pickett, have a more effective and less discriminatory education system, there should be more individuals who ‘like everything’, i.e. those on the higher levels of the social hierarchy. Therefore, in egalitarian countries the music that is popular should be slightly different from that in stratified countries, especially in highly stratified ones. In fact, a brief review of the best-selling pop music singles (top40-charts.com) in both stratified and egalitarian countries suggests that the relationship outlined here is noticeable. In Portugal, the most stratified country in the European Union, only two singles, both by Buraka Som Sistema, out of the top 20 (on 4 May 2009) could be defined as more complex, more demanding pieces with no reference to unsophisticated tastes. In the rather highly stratified Ireland there is not a song in the top 20 chart that could be categorized as off-culture. The situation is identical in the extremely highly stratified Brazil, where only the cultural content acquired by the lower reaches of the social pyramid is visible, without any sign of omnivorousness, at least in the pop charts. Analysing the Swedish pop charts, Sweden being not only one of the most egalitarian countries in the European Union, but even on a global scale, it will be noticed that it features considerably more songs that are not just entertaining dance hits produced by global music companies, and that they are much more stylistically diverse, featuring not only pop, but also hip hop, hard rock, dance music, and produced by multinational music companies and local artists; and beside pop and dance stars such as Beyonce Knowles or Lady Gaga, a rather more demanding group of musicians, such as Erik Hassle, Caroline Af Ugglas, Depeche Mode, Green Day, Milow, Promoe and Dead By April, are to be found. Sociologists are certainly not the ones to arbitrate on the popular or ‘fringe’ character of musical pieces, thus the above observation is solely a starting point for further research on particular elements that contribute to cultural activity and their potential correlation with inequality in a country. Therefore, it is worth investigating whether the social inequality assessed with the indicators used in Wilkinson and Pickett’s analyses, especially the Gini and quintile indicators, is correlated (and what the nature of this correlation is) with such parameters as the number of people employed within the cultural sector, the number of those attending theatres, libraries, museums and art galleries, but also whether it is correlated with the number of book readers.
Let us then investigate, in other words, whether ‘the theory of everything’ as suggested by Wilkinson and Pickett in fact does cover ‘everything’ and whether it can account for the discrepancies in the level of citizens’ cultural activity.
Method of analysis, hypotheses and source of data
This study concentrates exclusively on an analysis of the phenomena not examined by Wilkinson and Pickett, such as cultural activity and employment in the cultural sector.
Cultural activity refers to the contact with cultural institutions and media. It relies on contact with the works and creators of culture, also via the electronic media, with stable, formal and semi-formal roles of the sender and receiver. In other words, cultural activity is understood here as the contact between the receiver and cultural institutions, such as theatres, orchestras, opera houses, cinemas, libraries, art galleries, cultural centres and various types of museum, as well as their participation in cultural events such as live concerts or film festivals, and additionally as the contact with various works of art broadcast on TV, the radio and Internet.
Employment in the cultural sector covers all professions related to culture and artistic work in general, which include librarians, architects, artists, writers, journalists, etc.
The above definitions are in accordance both with the NACE (Nomenclature statistique des Activités économiques dans la Communauté Européenne [Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community]) and the ISCO (International Standard Classification of Occupations) classifications.
This article analyses the correlation between social inequality measured with the Gini index and the income quintile share ratio and: (1) the percentage of people who have been to the theatre and a museum or an art gallery at least once in the last 12 months; (2) the percentage of people who have read at least one book in the last 12 months; and (3) the percentage of people employed in the cultural sector with reference to the active workforce in a country.
The following four hypotheses, all in accordance with Wilkinson and Pickett’s reasoning, have been formulated:
H1: The percentage of people employed in the cultural sector is higher in egalitarian societies than in the stratified ones.
H2: The higher the level of egalitarianism is (i.e. the lower the Gini and quintile indicators), the more people report having read at least one book in the last 12 months; and vice versa, the greater the income differential and social inequality (i.e. the higher the Gini and quintile indicators), the fewer people report to have read at least one book in the last 12 months.
H3: The higher the level of egalitarianism is, the higher the percentage of people who have visited an art gallery/museum at least once in the last 12 months; and vice versa: the higher the level of stratification, the lower the percentage of people who have visited an art gallery/museum in the last 12 months.
H4: The higher the level of egalitarianism is, the higher the percentage of people who have been to the theatre at least once in the last 12 months; and vice versa: the higher the level of stratification is, the lower the percentage of people who have been to the theatre at least once in the last 12 months.
The investigation of the above hypotheses was based on Eurostat data concerning employment in the cultural sector in the 27 member states of the European Union in 2005, and the data on cultural activity in the European Union in 2007 (Eurobarometer, 2007; Eurostat, 2007). The data were compared with the Gini index in 2004, by Eurostat, and the quintile share ratio for every country in the same year and from the same source (European Commission, 2008). The analysis involves 22 European Union member countries in which cultural activity was measured and for which both indicators of social inequality measured in 2004 are available, i.e. Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. The analysis excludes Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Romania due to the lack of relevant Gini indices and the quintile share ratio in 2004. The data for that year were chosen predominantly because there was no significant change of inequality indicators values between 2004 and 2007, and also due to the unavailability of the complete list of the values of the indicators for the following years.
Analysis
The first point of interest is the possible correlation between the number of people employed in the cultural sector and the Gini and quintile indicators. The former correlation is shown in Figure 1 and the latter in Figure 2.
Gini index and the percentage of people employed in the cultural sector (in relation to the overall number of those employed).
Quintile share ratio and the percentage of people employed in the cultural sector (in relation to the overall number of those employed).
The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for the Gini index and the percentage of people employed in the cultural sector in relation to the total workforce is –.415 (p = .055). Therefore, it may be stated that there exists an average (inversely proportional) correlation between the variables, which is, however, of no actual significance to the statistics here (it is not possible to generalize this relation in the entire EU sample).
Interestingly, the relationship between the percentage of people employed in the cultural sector and the quintile index is slightly different. The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for quintile share ratio and the percentage of people employed in the cultural sector in relation to the total workforce is –.429 (p = .046). Therefore, it is possible to notice the average negative correlation (inversely proportional), the correlation being statistically significant at the level of .05 (bilaterally).
Despite the lack of a clear correlation, the charts display a considerable difference between the countries at the extremes of the income differential, e.g. Sweden and Portugal. The number of people employed in the cultural sector in egalitarian countries is evidently higher than in the stratified ones. In the most egalitarian countries: Sweden (3.5%), Finland (3.3%) and Denmark (3.0%), far more people are employed in the cultural sector (in relation to the total number of the workforce) than in the most stratified country, Portugal (1.4%). However, the highest percentage of people employed in the cultural sector is in the Netherlands, a medium-stratified country, and a high percentage is present in highly stratified Estonia (3.2%) and Great Britain (3.1%). The lowest percentage of people employed in the cultural sector is in the relatively egalitarian Slovakia (1.8%) and highly stratified Poland (1.7%).
The second point of interest is the possible relationship between book readership and the scale of social inequality. Figure 3 presents the correlation between the percentage of the people who claim to have read at least one book in the last 12 months and the Gini index, while Figure 4 displays the correlation between the same percentage and the quintile index.
Gini index and the percentage of people who claim to have read at least one book in the last 12 months.
Quintile share ratio and the percentage of people who claim to have read at least one book in the last 12 months.
The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for the Gini index and the percentage of respondents who claim to have read at least one book in the last 12 months is –.679 (p = .001). Thus, it is possible to diagnose a clear negative, inversely proportional, correlation between the variables. The correlation is of statistical importance at the level of .001 (bilaterally), which allows us to extrapolate within the sample of the EU.
The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for the quintile share ratio and the percentage of the respondents who claim to have read at least one book in the last 12 months is –.429 (p = .046). Thus, it is possible to mark an average negative, inversely proportional, statistical relationship. The correlation is statistically significant at the level of .05 (bilaterally).
Therefore, it indicates that book readership is strongly correlated with experienced inequalities. The higher the income gap in a country, the fewer the people who read books. The difference between egalitarian countries and those countries with a high income gap is more than clear in this matter. In egalitarian Sweden (87.0%), Denmark (83.0%) or the Czech Republic (82.0%) considerably more people claim to have read at least one book in the last year than in the highly stratified Poland (64.0%) or Portugal (50.0%). Additionally, there is a group of Mediterranean countries, Greece (59.0%), Cyprus (56.0%) and Spain (59.0%), where book readership remains at a very low level. However, in one of those countries, Cyprus, an average income differential can be noted, whereas in Greece and in Spain the scale of social inequality is rather high. An interesting exception can, again, be observed in two countries with high income gaps – Great Britain (82.0%) and Estonia (79.0%) – where book readership remains at a high level despite the earnings differential.
The third analytically significant point is the possible correlation between the Gini index and the quintile index, and the percentage of people who claim to have visited an art gallery or a museum at least once in the last 12 months. These correlations are presented in Figures 5 and 6 respectively.
Gini index and the percentage of people who have visited at least one museum or gallery in the last 12 months.
Quintile share ratio and the percentage of people who have visited at least one museum or gallery in the last 12 months.
The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for the Gini index and the percentage of respondents who claim to have visited museums or art galleries at least once in the last 12 months is –.647 (p = .001). Thus, a clear correlation exists between the variables marked negatively (inversely proportional). The correlation is of statistical importance at the level .01 (bilaterally).
The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for the quintile share ratio and the percentage of respondents who claim to have visited museums or art galleries at least once in the last 12 months is –.633 (p = .002). Thus, a clear negative (inversely proportional) statistical correlation exists between the variables. The correlation is significant at the level of .01 (bilaterally). Therefore, it is possible to extrapolate the results of the analysis.
Thus, undoubtedly, there is an evident relationship between the level of social inequality in a country and the tendency of its citizens to visit art galleries and museums. A high level of egalitarianism correlates with frequent visits to the temples to high art, an average income gap with average cultural activity, while a wide income gap seems to discourage people from visiting art galleries and museums. The difference in this respect between egalitarian Sweden (62.0%), Denmark (65.0%) and the Netherlands (62.0%) and those countries characterized by deep social inequality, such as Poland (32.0%), Greece (25.0%) and Portugal (24.0%), is evident. As was the case with the former variables, a group of countries that fall outside this simple, linear relationship can be distinguished. Once more, these are the highly stratified Estonia (48%) and Great Britain (49%), where visiting museums remains at the same level as in egalitarian countries, and the medium-stratified Cyprus (25.0%) and highly stratified Greece, where this type of activity is at a very low level.
The last relation to be analysed is the possible correlation between the Gini index and quintile index, and the declarations of the European respondents to have attended at least one theatre performance in the last 12 months. These correlations are presented in Figures 7 and 8 respectively.
Gini index and the percentage of people who have been to the theatre at least once in the last 12 months.
Quintile share ratio and the percentage of people who have been to the theatre at least once in the last 12 months.
The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for the Gini index and the percentage of respondents who have been to the theatre at least once in the last 12 months is –.577 (p = .005). Thus, it is possible to demonstrate a clear negative, inversely proportional, correlation between the variables. The correlation is of statistical importance at the level of .01 (bilaterally).
The Pearson linear correlation coefficient for the quintile share ratio and the percentage of respondents who claim to have been to the theatre at least once in the last 12 months is –.577 (p = .005). The variables demonstrate a clear negative, inversely proportional, correlation. The correlation is of statistical significance at the level of .01 (bilaterally).
As is evident, the wider the income gap, the less frequently people attend the theatre. The population of egalitarian countries, such as Sweden (47.0%), Finland (48.0%) or the Czech Republic (44.0%), go to the theatre more often than that in stratified countries, such as Poland (18.0%), Portugal (19.0%) or Italy (26.0%). However, once again, a distinct discrepancy in the highly stratified countries, such as Great Britain (41.0%) and Estonia (49.0%), is evident.
Discussion
All four hypotheses can be confirmed, however the relationship indicated in the first hypothesis, i.e. between the number of people employed in the cultural sector and the income gap, cannot be generalized due to low statistical significance.
Cultural activity measured according to the number of books people claim to have read and the number of visits to museums, art galleries or theatres undoubtedly proves a strong correlation between the income gap and the scale of social inequality in an EU country. The more egalitarian the country and the smaller the gap between the richest and the poorest, the more frequent people’s claims to have read at least one book in the last 12 months and the more often they claim to have visited an art gallery or a museum or gone to the theatre at least once in the same period. However, the greater that gap, the more seldom the cultural activity. Therefore, the scale of social inequality in EU member states can successfully be predicted if the data on cultural activity are available, and vice versa.
A slightly more complicated case would seem to be that of the correlation between the scale of the income gap and the percentage of those in the cultural sector in proportion to the active workforce. However, countries at the opposite ends of the scale of egalitarianism are sure to feature drastically different percentages of people employed in the cultural sector. In more egalitarian countries, such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland, the percentage of those employed in the cultural sector is twice as high as in highly stratified countries, such as Poland and Portugal. Estonia and Great Britain, as highly stratified societies, are exceptions to the rule, so it would be reasonable to claim that the high percentage of those employed in the cultural sector is a result of some unique cultural, social or economic circumstances.
In general, the results of the analysis that proves the hypotheses are surprising. It is safe to assume that such social problems as lack of trust, the number of people suffering from mental illness and the incidence of teenage pregnancies, as indicated by Wilkinson and Pickett, are in fact determined by the scale of the income gap, but cultural activity has so far been perceived as a sector completely unrelated to the scale of social inequality. A low rate of cultural activity in relatively developed countries, where strong industrial divisions are diminishing, has up to this point been explained in relation to the overall number of people with a poor education or the number of poor, who were either uninterested in or, because of a lack of funds, simply unable to indulge in cultural activity, especially such high culture as going to the theatre or visiting art galleries. In other words, a lack of cultural activity would more likely be related to the scale of absolute poverty and low indicators of education, especially higher education, than the scale of inequality. This lack of activity may also be a contributory factor for those who have not benefited from a higher education, as well as to the lack of funds for the necessary theatre tickets or books.
At the same time, the key factor in low cultural activity may be social inequality as exemplified by Poland, which is characterized by an exceptionally low level of cultural activity and an extremely high level of social inequality. The ever-increasing ratio of participation in higher education fails to boost interest in the cultural sphere, so a lack of appropriate education cannot be held responsible. Even the highly educated Poles have joined the rat race aspiring to high social status through the traditional means of acquiring material goods, instead of aspiring to being cultural through active engagement in culture like the Swedes. Those Poles who are becoming richer and better educated have insufficient time for cultural activity due to their being focused on pursuing the better paid, who constitute their reference point. The circumstances characterized by a wide income gap and extreme social inequality are, therefore, unfavourable conditions for cultural activity and discourage it when the economic and social gaps between the extreme groups have to be narrowed. As a result, the group traditionally culturally active, the middle class that has sought to establish itself since the political transformation of 1989, is excluded from cultural activity. In former Eastern bloc countries the developing middle class is commonly, subjectively and socially regarded as the so-called nouveau riche, who have managed to climb the social ladder in relation to their parents. The educational boom, along with the generally poor choice of educational courses and money-driven educational institutions lacking educational integrity to the extent that they may be considered culturally constructive in terms of understanding higher values, was enough to prompt the structural leap, but not enough to form a qualitatively culturally separate category. In practice, members of this unconsolidated middle class fulfil the desires of their parents in terms of taste and lifestyle, both deeply rooted in lower social classes, while, at the same time, cultivating similar opinions regarding the culture on offer. It is therefore the proverb ‘to have’ rather than ‘to be’ that dominates, and even when it is ‘to be’, it usually refers to a specific location such as a shopping centre (referred to as ‘shopping gallery’ in Poland) or an Egyptian beach. The traditional charcoal barbecue is usurped by the electric barbecue, cheap beer and vodka are replaced by high-end alcoholic drinks and a second-rate bar is abandoned in favour of an exclusive club, where similar entertainment can be enjoyed not for the equivalent of a couple of euros in cash, but with the golden gloss of a credit card. What can be observed here are the rare examples of the cultural elite and the nouveau riche who have emerged from the masses of the less well-off to announce their presence in the most obvious and noticeable way. Poland fits this pattern perfectly, having attained the stage of socioeconomic development that emphasizes the struggle for status over culture, which in more economically developed countries is treated as a way of attaining that status, emphasizing it or benefiting financially.
The significant dissimilarity, evident in all cases, of the situation in Great Britain and Estonia suggests that high cultural activity is, despite a considerable income gap, caused by such factors as: (1) a well-developed cultural infrastructure that is unattainable in such a form to other countries with a major income gap, especially to the developing former Eastern bloc countries; (2) the relatively affordable prices of tickets; (3) the considerably higher proportion of the population living in the city than in the country; (4) a high scholarization index in higher education, i.e. a high proportion of educated people within the whole population, which can generate and maintain cultural activity regardless of an income gap; (5) the unique bourgeois tradition, an integral part of which is instilling an interest in culture and arts during socialization; (6) the size of the country, specifically the relatively low number of citizens in Estonia, which doubtlessly influences particular cultural choices, compared with the population density of Great Britain; (7) time, understood as the continued existence of a social structure in which the consolidated, established middle class follows the patterns of the highest structural categories, seeks new modes of expression and emphasizes itself and its position, free from the mental and social ballast of their less well-off forebears.
In addition, the case of Great Britain is exceptional since its cultural sector has a tremendous economic potential. This sector in Britain (music, press and publishing industries, concert organization and other cultural events) generates enormous financial profits, which paradoxically amplify income gap. It is, however, possible that book readership in Great Britain is simply essential to earn a living because the cultural industry is so well developed that it offers a great number of jobs that – and to reach the status of the wealthiest – one needs to create and consume cultural products at the same time.
Conclusions
On the whole, the concept developed by Wilkinson proves to be a useful instrument for the interpretation of the origin of many social problems, even those apparently distant from issues of income and structural processes of phenomena such as low or high cultural activity. The outlined correlations indicate that citizens’ cultural choices are influenced by the experience of inequality in annual income. It would be tempting to claim that it is the basic and main factor, and that the key to cultural activation of citizens is income levelling. One ought, however, to bear in mind that the inequalities in income distribution experienced nowadays are the result of a number of particular processes that lead to them. They derive from both the present and the past. In this sense, the surprising conclusion of this text is important, but it requires a further and more detailed exploration. Above all, the study should focus on which of the processes leading to inequality in income distribution in particular socioeconomic conditions specifically determines cultural activity.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.