![]() According to Consumer Expenditure Survey data from 2003-2013, the price of college tuition increased 80 per cent, while the cost of women’s apparel increased by just 6 per cent over the same period. Thus, there is a greater need to devote financial resources to education to be able to afford it at all. The vast chasm between middle-income and top 1 per cent spending on education in the US is particularly concerning because, unlike material goods, education has become more and more expensive in recent decades. In fact, top 1 per cent spending on education has increased 3.5 times since 1996, while middle-income spending on education has remained flat over the same time period. The top 1 per cent now devote the greatest share of their expenditures to inconspicuous consumption, with education forming a significant portion of this spend (accounting for almost 6 per cent of top 1 per cent household expenditures, compared with just over 1 per cent of middle-income spending). Eschewing an overt materialism, the rich are investing significantly more in education, retirement and health – all of which are immaterial, yet cost many times more than any handbag a middle-income consumer might buy. ![]() The US Consumer Expenditure Survey data reveals that, since 2007, the country’s top 1 per cent (people earning upwards of $300,000 per year) are spending significantly less on material goods, while middle-income groups (earning approximately $70,000 per year) are spending the same, and their trend is upward. The rise of the aspirational class and its consumer habits is perhaps most salient in the United States. None of the consumer choices that the term covers are inherently obvious or ostensibly material but they are, without question, exclusionary. These new status behaviours are what I call ‘inconspicuous consumption’. This new elite cements its status through prizing knowledge and building cultural capital, not to mention the spending habits that go with it – preferring to spend on services, education and human-capital investments over purely material goods. But the dramatic changes in elite spending are driven by a well-to-do, educated elite, or what I call the ‘aspirational class’. Yes, oligarchs and the superrich still show off their wealth with yachts and Bentleys and gated mansions. Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars, the rich have taken to using much more tacit signifiers of their social position. On the surface, the ostensible consumer objects favoured by these two groups no longer reside in two completely different universes. They both lease SUVs, take airplanes, and go on cruises. In the face of rising social inequality, both the rich and the middle classes own fancy TVs and nice handbags. However, the democratisation of consumer goods has made them far less useful as a means of displaying status.
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