Social stratification in the Czech Republic and Central Europe: 1968-2018

Using historical sources and available datasets of sociological and statistical surveys, the project aims to compare the history of stratification research and the development of social structure in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia since the communist times, also in comparison with Austria. First, the history of stratification research will be investigated from its empirical beginnings up to present time. Second, the leading concepts of stratification research since 1990 will be explained. Third, the trends in the main dimensions of social structure in individual countries will be described, including mobility patterns and the perception of inequality . Fourth, the focus will be on the units of social structure in view of changing family and household structure. And fifth, the change in relationships of ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ dimensions of social structure will be analysed. Besides other data, the comparative European statistical survey EU-SILC will be mainly used which is only rarely exploited for stratification purposes.