Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This study is available via the UK Data Service Qualibank, an online tool for browsing, searching and citing the content of selected qualitative data collections held at the UK Data Service.

The 'Affluent Worker' project was undertaken to test empirically the thesis of working class embourgeoisement. Conducted in the early 1960s, the empirical study consisted of interviews with manual workers and their wives. The original project was exploring the social and cultural influences on manual workers’ class identities. Although the researchers rejected the original embourgeoisement thesis that working class people were becoming assimilated to the middle classes, they did argue that traditional working class norms had been adapted in the post war period of prosperity. They found that in place of assimilation ‘major on-going modification in manual-non manual differences were occurring at the level of values and aspirations’ (Goldthorpe et al. 1969:26).

The research studied the attitudes and behaviour of high-wage earners in three mass or continuous flow companies. During 1961-1962, married male workers from three Luton factories (Vauxhall, Skefco and Laporte) were interviewed at work and then at home with their wives. Additionally, a sample of middle-class, white-collar workers from the same companies were interviewed only at home. A pilot of the study was conducted in Cambridge before the main Luton study. This data collection consists of the Cambridge data and a subset of the transcribed class question administered in Luton. 

Main Topics:

Social attitudes, family life, social mobility, employment, lifestyle, education, social class.