̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - wealth

Boom and bust? Millennials aren’t all worse off than Baby Boomers, but the rich-poor gap is widening

tdk25 — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 09:18:59 +0000

Millennials, a generation often characterised as less wealthy than their parents, are not uniformly worse off than their Baby Boomer counterparts, according to new research.

They are, however, contending with a “vast and increasing” wealth gap, due to the increasingly uneven financial rewards reaped from different life and career paths, compared with their Boomer predecessors. This creates the impression that as a generation, they are losing out.

̽��ֱ��study, by researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge (UK), Humboldt ̽��ֱ�� Berlin (Germany), and the French research university Sciences Po, examined the work and family life trajectories of more than 6,000 Baby Boomers and 6,000 Millennials in the United States. It evaluated and compared the impact of these work and life choices on their wealth by the age of 35.

Whether western Millennials are doing better or worse than previous generations is widely debated. Millennials are often positioned as the victims of social changes that have made employment and family life less stable. According to some observers, they are “the first generation that is worse off than their parents”. A recent article challenged the “myth of the broke Millennial”, however, claiming that they are actually thriving.

̽��ֱ��new study suggests that the answer depends on which Millennials are being discussed. It found that Millennials were statistically more likely to work in low-paid service jobs or live with their parents as they entered middle age. Most of these individuals were economically worse off at 35 than Baby Boomers with comparable careers and lives. Millennials with typical middle-class life trajectories accumulated substantially more wealth than their Baby Boomers counterparts, however.

̽��ֱ��research, published in the American Journal of Sociology, describes this widening wealth gap as “a fundamental moral and political challenge”.

Lead author, Dr Rob Gruijters, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��debate about whether Millennials are worse off is a distraction. ̽��ֱ��crucial intergenerational shift has been in how different family and career patterns are rewarded. ̽��ֱ��wealthiest Millennials now have more than ever, while the poor are left further behind.”

"This divergence in financial rewards is exacerbating extreme levels of wealth inequality in the United States. Individuals with typical working class careers, like truck drivers or hairdressers, used to be able to buy a home and build a modest level of assets, but this is more difficult for the younger generation. ̽��ֱ��solution lies with measures such as progressive wealth taxation, and policies like universal health insurance, that give more people basic security.”

̽��ֱ��study compared late Baby Boomers (born 1957-64) with early Millennials (born 1980-84), using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Rather than using broad averages to compare the generations, it mapped each individual’s life trajectory from 18 to 35 as a sequence of changes in their work, family and living arrangements. Individuals with similar trajectories were then clustered together, enabling the researchers to compare the net worth of Millennials and Boomers with similar life experiences.

̽��ֱ��data revealed striking intergenerational shifts in career patterns and family dynamics. By age 35, 17% of Baby Boomers had followed a path in which they progressed from college into prestigious professional careers like law and medicine, whereas only 7.3% of Millennials did the same. Millennials were, on the other hand, more likely to be engaged in other professional roles, like social work and teaching, or in service sector jobs like retail, waiting and caregiving.

Additionally, Millennials tended to postpone marriage and prolong their stay in the parental home. Early marriage and parenthood characterised the lives of 27% of Boomers, but just 13% of Millennials.

In terms of financial security, the study found that wealth inequality is much more pronounced among Millennials than it was for Boomers. While 62% of Boomers owned homes at 35, for example, only 49% of Millennials did. Around 14% of Millennials had negative net worth, meaning their debts outweighed their assets, compared with 8.7% of Boomers.

There was limited evidence that this gap is intrinsically driven by changing work and family patterns. Rather, the economic rewards for secure, middle and upper-class lifestyles have increased, while those for less stable, working-class trajectories have either stagnated or declined.

For instance, among Baby Boomers, 63% of low-skilled service workers owned their own home at 35, compared with 42% of Millennials in the same occupations. ̽��ֱ��poorest Millennials in service sector roles now often have negative net worth, which was less common among Boomers.

̽��ֱ��authors argue that these challenges not only foster intergenerational tensions but have also contributed to other social problems, such as the rise of populist authoritarianism. Addressing the problem, they add, will require big solutions: principally wealth taxes and policies that offer financial security to the less advantaged. Such measures might, for example, include access to stable housing, universal health insurance, and a higher minimum wage.

Co-author Professor Anette Fasang stressed the importance of urgent public intervention. “We need to make it easier for those who are currently being left behind to accumulate wealth in the first place,” she said. “A slow and tentative approach won’t suffice. Significant action is needed to build a more equal society, where more people can experience some form of prosperity.”

A study of over 12,000 people in the US, comparing Baby Boomers and Millennials, raises concerns about Millennials’ diverging financial gains.

̽��ֱ��wealthiest Millennials now have more than ever, while the poor are left further behind

Rob Gruijters

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Millennials pose for a photo

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Feeling poorer than your friends in early adolescence is associated with worse mental health

fpjl2 — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 09:08:25 +0000

Young people who believe they come from poorer backgrounds than their friends are more likely to have lower self-esteem and be victims of bullying than those who feel financially equal to the rest of their peer group, according to a new study from psychologists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��team also found that those who think themselves poorer and those who believe they are richer were both more likely to perpetrate bullying. Overall, feeling a sense of economic equality among your friends had the best outcomes for mental health and social behaviour.

While economic disadvantage on a society-wide spectrum has long been linked to mental health and social problems in young people, the new study is one of the first to show that just feeling poorer compared to those in your immediate social sphere may be related to negative psychological outcomes.

According to researchers, judgments we make about ourselves via “social comparison” in early adolescence – how popular or attractive we think we are, compared to others – are central to our burgeoning sense of self, and perceived economic status may contribute to this development.

“Adolescence is an age of transitions, when we use social comparisons to make self-judgments and develop our sense of self,” said study lead author Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer, a Cambridge Gates Scholar and PhD candidate in the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Psychology.

“A sense of our economic position not just in wider society, but in our immediate environment, might be problematic for our sense of belonging,” said Piera Pi-Sunyer. “Belonging is particularly important for well-being and psychosocial functioning during adolescence.”

“Our research suggests that wealth comparisons with those around us might contribute to a sense of social and personal self-worth when we are young.”

̽��ֱ��latest study, published today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, was co-led by Piera Pi-Sunyer and Dr Jack Andrews of the ̽��ֱ�� of New South Wales, as part of a research project conducted by Cambridge psychologist Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore.

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed perceived economic inequality within friendship groups among 12,995 children in the UK at age 11.

Eleven-year-olds who believed themselves poorer than their friends scored 6-8% lower for self-esteem, and 11% lower in terms of wellbeing, than those who saw themselves as economically equal to friends.

Those who considered themselves less wealthy were also more likely to have 'internalising difficulties' such as anxiety, as well as behavioural problems eg anger issues or hyperactivity.

Adolescents who see themselves as poorer than their friends were 17% more likely to report being bullied or picked on compared to those who feel financially the same as friends at age 11.

While reported levels of victimisation fell across the board by the time young people reached 14 years old, those who considered themselves poorer were still 8% more likely to be victimised than those who felt economically similar to friends.

Feeling both richer or poorer than peers was related to 3-5% higher rates of actually perpetrating bullying. “It may be that feeling different in any way at a time when belonging is important increases the risk of interpersonal difficulties such as bullying,” said Piera Pi-Sunyer.

Part of Piera Pi-Sunyer’s PhD research looks at the cognitive processes behind how we view ourselves. This includes how memorising and internalising self-judgements in our earlier years can guide how we come to think of ourselves – sometimes known as 'self-schema'.

“Negative judgments about ourselves can bias us to pay attention to information that reinforces a lack of self-worth, which has implications for mental health. We see this may well include economic perceptions among some of our peer and friendship groups during adolescence,” said Piera Pi-Sunyer.

̽��ֱ��researchers used data collected as part of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), conducted with thousands of young people born between the years 2000 and 2002. ̽��ֱ��surveys gauged an array of mental states and social behaviours, and included questions on perceived economic status.

̽��ֱ��majority of children felt they were as wealthy as their friends, but 4% and 8% perceived themselves as poorer or richer, respectively, than their friends (16% said they didn’t know).

̽��ֱ��MCS also gathered data on 'objective family income', including a measure of weekly family disposable income, allowing researchers to discount the effects of actual parental wealth.

“Many studies suggest that, objectively, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have more mental health difficulties. Our findings show that the subjective experience of disadvantage is also relevant,” added Piera Pi-Sunyer.

“You do not have to be rich or poor to feel richer or poorer than your friends, and we can see this affects the mental health of young adolescents.”

How rich or poor young people think they are compared to their friendship group is linked to wellbeing and even bullying during the shift between childhood and teenage years.

Belonging is particularly important for well-being and psychosocial functioning during adolescence

Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer

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School children in Great Yarmouth sitting in the cloakroom

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Opinion: What do our spending habits reveal about our romantic intentions?

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 08:20:08 +0000

Money might not buy you love, but according to some studies in psychology and consumer behaviour, how you spend it could reveal a thing or two about your romantic intentions. These studies demonstrate that just thinking about meeting a new partner can actually impact our shopping decisions in surprising ways – affecting men and women differently.

Male satin bower bird building a nest by collecting blue objects. CC BY-SA

These studies are largely based on “costly signalling theory” – a model borrowed from evolutionary biology which suggests that conspicuous displays that are difficult to acquire, such as the elaborate and colourful nests of bowerbirds, serve a vital function in signalling one’s desirable traits.

In humans, the signals displayed by men and women tend to differ, due to the different traits that are thought to be attractive to the opposite sex based on evolutionary pressures. According to costly signalling theory, men should seek to display their wealth and resources to women, while women should advertise their helpfulness and kindness to men.

Emotional shopping

But how does this relate to spending? One study investigated this question by showing half of the participants pictures of attractive people of the opposite sex or having them reading a scenario about meeting an attractive person for a romantic walk on the beach. ̽��ֱ��other half read a neutral scenario unrelated to attraction. ̽��ֱ��results showed that men who had romance on their minds were more likely to report that they would spend money on conspicuous luxury goods, for example a new car, a new watch, a new cell phone or a nice holiday.

Women, on the other hand, did not increase their desire for luxury goods when thinking about meeting a new partner. However, such thoughts did increase their desire to be altruistic and helpful (this was determined by a question to both women and men about how much volunteer work they were willing to do if they had free time).

Another set of studies found that men were particularly interested in making luxury purchases after reading a scenario about a fleeting romance, rather than a potential long-term relationship. This was especially the case in men who were already more interested in short-term relationships than in long-term partnerships. Interestingly, women reported being more attracted to such conspicuously consuming men if they were looking for a short-term relationship, but not for the long term.

But what about women? One study found that women who were thinking about female romantic rivals trying to poach their mate were more likely to purchase luxury goods. This effect was not found when they did not imagine attractive rivals being around. However, the study did not examine to what extent men’s consumption can be linked to being scared about losing a partner.

Surprisingly, this study also found that women who possessed luxury goods were seen by other women as having a more devoted romantic partner.

Another study looked at how women’s spending habits would change during an economic recession. From a list of items, women chose more objects associated with grooming when thinking about a recession, as compared to no recession. However, non-grooming items such as headphones were more likely to be chosen when not thinking about a recession. Women also reported being more eager to attract a mate with resources (such as money) when thinking about a recession.

But how do we spend when we’re less optimistic about our romantic chances? A study by me and my colleagues has shown that men are willing to pay more for a conspicuous luxury car after thinking about a romantic rejection. This could be due to their desire to attract a new partner, after having had their self-esteem harmed. However, women show the opposite pattern: they are willing to pay more for a luxury car after thinking about a romantic success, likely because they view the car as a sign of relationship commitment with their partner.

Eric Levy, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in Marketing (Assistant Professor), ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Eric Levy (Cambridge Judge Business School) discusses how thinking about meeting a new partner can impact our shopping decisions.

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Lessons from history: how Europe did (and didn’t) grow rich

amb206 — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0000

In the modern world, we take for granted the fact that our economies become richer and more sophisticated decade-on-decade – and that our grandchildren will live a better life than our own, just as we live a better life than our grandparents. However, for the greatest part of human history, the standard of living was low and subject to little improvement.

One of the most important questions that economists seek to answer is how we made the shift from stagnation to continued growth, a shift commonly thought to have occurred with the Industrial Revolution in late 18th-century Britain. ̽��ֱ��stakes are clearly high: being able to answer this significant question would give us the potential to unlock millions of people from poverty across the world today.

̽��ֱ��most popular answer to the question of who or what created lasting growth can be found on the reverse side of the British £20 note, which bears the face of Adam Smith, champion of the free market. Following Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, liberalisation and free trade have become familiar to us all, and the state and the market are commonly seen in opposition, with the release of the market requiring reining in the state through privatisation and deregulation.

In the tradition of Smith, modern day economists argue that the reason why economies were poor in the past was that absolutist monarchs undermined property rights (reneging on debt and forcibly extracting wealth from minority groups), and that the state too heavily regulated the economy, including granting monopoly privileges to guilds and international trading companies, all of which limited the incentives and ability of people to buy and sell goods freely. ̽��ֱ��result was that people lacked the incentive to produce, invest and invent – economic growth was thereby hampered.

Only with the onset of the Glorious Revolution in Britain in 1688, which transferred power from the monarch to an elected parliament, were markets supposedly set free, culminating in the Industrial Revolution a century later. In the century which followed, the collapse of the Communist regime in Russia and the success of market liberalisation in China, seemed to add credence to this free-market led view of growth. By 2003, following decades of market liberalisation across the globe, the President of the American Economic Association stood up and publicly announced that the future was bright for the global economy. Instead, what happened was the very opposite: we now stand in the middle of the greatest global economic crisis since the Great Depression.

So, with the economic crisis in mind, what evidence is there to support the claim that markets really do deliver in the long term? As my recent book Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe has uncovered, very little historical evidence exists to support this claim, despite its power and influence on policy-making over the last two centuries.

Looking at evidence from as far back as ancient Babylonia and through to medieval, early-modern and modern Europe, my research has built a picture of the evolution of markets across the long span of human history using one particularly abundant historical data source – the prices of goods. ̽��ֱ��prices originate from sources as wide as the clay tablets of ancient Babylonia to the account books of Oxbridge Colleges, and include those for a number of commonly consumed goods (such as candles, soap and linen), with the most abundant being for cereals (which provided around 80 per cent of calorie intake in pre-modern Europe).

Where markets became more developed, one should find that in response to trade flows, prices became less volatile and, for the same good, converged across different locations. By applying statistical techniques to measure price behaviour, I have been able to measure market development in a consistent and comparable way across different parts of Europe and across many hundreds of years.

If the free-market view were correct, the picture revealed should have been very simple: poorly-developed markets throughout history until the 17th and 18th centuries, at which point new previously unseen levels of market development were achieved (particularly in Britain), culminating in the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern economic growth. Instead, the picture I found was very different indeed: markets were certainly not a ‘modern invention’.

Indeed, the presence of markets in Europe as far back as Roman times would not surprise any visitor to museums, many of which have on display a great abundance of coins indicative of market-exchange, together with artifacts such as vases which had been traded across hundreds of miles to the point at which they were unearthed in an archaeological dig. Such markets were supported by the vast state infrastructure for which the Romans are famous – a stable coinage system, a taxation system that funded transport and utilities, and a common legal system to uphold contracts.

Once the Roman state began to crumble, so did the markets it supported, leaving Europe in what was once called the ‘Dark Ages’, falling behind Byzantium and the Orient. Indeed, it was only with the development of institutions in medieval Europe which substituted for the state (such as the Church, guilds and city-states) that markets began to recover – a process which took many centuries.

My research shows that, by the end of the medieval period, markets were around two or three times as developed as in the early ancient period and were highly active throughout Europe. At this time, Venice was the leading long-distance trader on the continent, sourcing exotic silks and spices that had travelled along the ‘silk road’ from the Orient and Middle East all the way to Constantinople. In an effort to sell their goods to European customers, the Italians carved out and linked themselves into trade routes across Europe, exchanging the exotic goods from the East together with the produce of the Mediterranean (oil, soap and wine) for the woolen cloth of north-western Europe (where 45 per cent of the residents of Bruges worked manufacturing cloth in the early 14th century), and the grain, metals, amber and furs of central and eastern Europe.

̽��ֱ��customs records of Southampton reveal a constant battle between the English authorities and the Italians, with one official refusing in 1423 to disembark an Italian ship on which customs duties were owed, only for the captain stubbornly to set sail, with the official eventually having to give in and disembark on the Isle of Wight.

Not only were markets for goods advancing in the medieval period, but so were those for finance, as along with the medieval trading boom came a demand for credit. It was in medieval Italy that Europe’s financial markets first began to develop, benefiting from the mathematical techniques which flowed from the East alongside the spices and silks. For this reason, many modern day banking terms have their origins in the Italian language, including the old symbols for the British currency (L, s and d), and, more generally, why the ‘intellectual fizz’ that was the Renaissance originated in the part of Europe most closely tied with the East.

Looking in envy at the wealth created by the Italian cities through trade with the East, other parts of Europe soon started to take advantage of developments in trading technology (such as sturdier ships, navigation and maps) to search for their own route to the Middle East and Orient. In the late 15th century, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic to find a ‘back door’, stumbling on the Americas along the way (some say that he took some convincing that he was not on Chinese soil). ̽��ֱ��result was the birth of the Atlantic economy, and the first major globalisation of the world economy: as calculated by O’Rourke and Williamson, world trade in the first half of the 16th century grew at a rate of 2.4 per cent a year, a figure not far off that in the twentieth century.

̽��ֱ��level of market development achieved by the end of the medieval period was already so advanced that, as my book argues, it was barely surpassed by the time of the Industrial Revolution three centuries later, only after which did markets witness a second phase of significant improvement. This is evident in the reduction in the disparity of wheat prices across Europe in the course of the 19th century, when the average price-gap fell from 45 per cent to only 4 per cent, indicating significantly more connected markets. This second major phase of improvement was an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution itself, based on the application of the steam engine to ships and rail, which drastically cut transport costs, making the world ‘smaller and flatter’.

With these greater flows of goods came significant flows of people – around 30 million people emigrated from Europe to the USA in the century after 1820. This was a process of globalisation that worked on all levels: goods, people and money, and it was not surpassed until towards the end of the 20th century. As with that most recent round of globalisation, it was economic growth itself (or the technologies it brings) that enables markets to reach a new level of development.

In sum, what my research has shown is that the two most significant phases of market development occurred either side of the period traditionally emphasised - and that they took place well before the Industrial Revolution, and then subsequent to it, as opposed to during the 17th and 18th centuries. ̽��ֱ��idea that markets are at the root of the modern age of sustained economic growth is therefore seriously in doubt when we look at the historical evidence. Instead, it makes much more sense to argue that markets, while necessary, are both insufficient for growth and are as much a consequence as a cause.

If we want to understand why the Industrial Revolution occurred and so how Europe and the West grew rich, we need to continue to pursue this long-span historical approach; looking back at economies throughout the past to work out in which ways they were similar and, more importantly, in which ways they truly were different to those of the modern age.

For economists immersing themselves in theory and models, economic history provides a wealth of evidence that is yet to be fully exploited – and which has the potential for revolutionising economic policy and, with it, the lives of many people in the present and future. Until the lessons of history are learned and we realise that more than markets were required to light the fire of continued growth, we may find it difficult to escape the current economic crisis and return to the sustained growth we had begun to take for granted.

Dr Victoria Bateman is Fellow and College Lecturer in Economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is author of Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe (Pickering and Chatto, 2012) and contributor to RJ Van der Spek, Jan Luiten van Zanden and ES van Leeuwen (eds), A History of Market Performance: From Ancient Babylonia to the Modern World (Routledge, forthcoming).

̽��ֱ��Industrial Revolution is seen as the spark that lit Europe’s economic prosperity. In her analysis of markets over many hundreds of years, economist Dr Victoria Bateman presents a compelling argument for a broader global perspective.

My research has built a picture of the evolution of markets across the long span of history using one particularly abundant data source – the prices of goods.

Dr Victoria Bateman

Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto) A View at the Entrance of the Grand Canal, Venice, c.1741 Oil on canvas, 59.3 cm x 94.9 cm (detail)

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How luxury became a four-letter word

bjb42 — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:45:26 +0000

For some, it's about fine wines, penthouses, exclusive clubs and designer clothes. For others, it can be as simple as settling down for the afternoon with a good book. Now a two-part BBC miniseries, presented by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academic Dr Michael Scott, is to reveal how the ambiguous meaning of luxury is the very thing that has defined our often-troubled relationship with it throughout history - and thwarted multiple attempts to stamp it out.

Starting on Monday (June 27), as part of BBC Four's Luxury season, Guilty Pleasures; Luxury In Ancient Greece And ̽��ֱ��Medieval World aims to trace the way in which human attitudes towards symbols of wealth, power and indulgence developed, from Ancient Athens to the time of the Black Death.

By examining how different societies dealt with the acquisition and flaunting of rare and expensive goods, Scott, from the ̽��ֱ��'s Faculty of Classics, believes we can get closer to understanding how luxury became a "four-letter word" - something that we frequently despise, but also can't quite live without.

In the austere economic climate (not least in Greece itself), and amid growing concerns about the environmental impact of trade and commerce, he believes that luxury should not simply be associated with over-indulgence. History suggests that our craving for the exquisite and the extravagant is too instinctive to be brought under control, but can be harnessed to better principles and good causes.

"Luxury isn't just a question of expensive and beautiful things for the rich and powerful - it feeds into ideas about democracy, patriotism and social harmony, as well as our values and our relationships with the divine," Scott says. "It is impossible to define, but we all know it when we see it because we each have our own ideas of what luxury is. That makes it a good tool for understanding the values and priorities of different societies, present and past.”

Historical attempts to rein in people's cravings for indulgence and luxury goods rarely succeeded. Even the Spartans, whose name became a byword for abstention - struggled with the issue. ̽��ֱ��lesson is still relevant today: China has recently introduced bans on luxury advertising because of fears that it might further agitate unrest about the country's wealth gap. ̽��ֱ��message from the past seems to be that such restrictions will fail.

Scott's examination starts in the 6th to 4th centuries BCE, when the inimical city states of Athens and Sparta both broke away from the traditional idea that luxury was something ruling monarchs and aristocrats brandished as a sign of personal power.

Athens, home to the first democracy, was also one of the first societies to try to manage luxury goods. Where wealth had once belonged to elite ruling clans, rich citizens were asked to pamper the democratic ideal instead, by channelling their money into communal services or public events. This was relatively successful, but attempts to specify what constituted luxury in sharper terms, such as what food people should buy, simply served to foment social unrest.

Sparta's contrasting efforts to stamp luxury out were a dismal failure. A raft of measures, such as bans on fancy clothes and the minting of coinage too heavy to carry around, were adopted to reinforce principles of self-discipline and self-restraint. These were ignored from the start, however, and after Sparta won the Peloponnesian Wars and became the dominant power in Greece, the flow of wealth into the city only exacerbated its rich-poor divide, stirring up the discontent that led to its implosion and decline at the end of the 4th century.

Scott views these early experiments as an "aberration" later smoothed over by Alexander the Great, who had a more conventional approach to showing off wealth. "What they struggled with was a fundamental dichotomy between political theory and reality - between the idea of all citizens being equal, and the fact that ideas about luxury and inequality would nevertheless always remain," he says.

̽��ֱ��second episode looks at how Christianity added a moral dimension to the problem. As it became an alternate force of government, the Church tried to treat luxury as a sin, but also knew that it could not afford to ignore it if it wanted power.

̽��ֱ��Middle Ages saw a series of ecclesiastical condemnations of luxury goods like spices and State attempts, in assorted acts of apparel, to prevent the wearing of clothes deemed above one's station. Overall, however, the Church became a major consumer of luxuries - whether investing in fine architecture, or producing beautiful, illuminated manuscripts. Luxury was employed in the service of God. As consumerism also became an important social force, earlier efforts to ban certain goods according to feudal strata became increasingly irrelevant.

By the 15th century, Scott believes that society had evolved something resembling the complex consumerist attitude to luxury it has today. " ̽��ֱ��power of luxury is its relativity," he concludes. "It is not confined by a thing, a time or a period. That means it's probably here to stay. Like the Athenian example, or the medieval Church, it works best when instead of trying to get rid of it, we find ways to accommodate and manage our need for it instead."

Guilty Pleasures begins on Monday, 27 June at 9pm on BBC Four, and continues on Monday 4 July.

A new series presented by Michael Scott examines the history of luxury and the origins of our ambivalent attitude to the finer things in life.

Luxury isn't just a question of expensive and beautiful things - it feeds into ideas about democracy, patriotism, social harmony, our values and our relationships with the divine.

Dr. Michael Scott

Tern TV

Michael Scott.

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