General Article Why are middle-class people more likely to play music, paint and act?

Topic Selected: Gender Equality
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Press release from the British Sociological Association.

The reason why middle-class people are more likely to play music, paint and act has been revealed in a major new study.

Research involving 78,000 people found that it was not wealth or social status that were strongly linked to people taking part in arts activities as amateurs or professionals.

Instead, it was the level of education that lay behind arts participation, the study by Dr Aaron Reeves, a sociologist at the University of Oxford, found.

In an article in the journal Sociology, Dr Reeves said that of the 78,011 surveyed, 18% had taken part in painting or photography, 9% in dance, 10% in music, 2% in drama or opera; 6% had written poetry, plays or fiction. Only 22% had not done any artistic activities.

He found that having a higher income did not make arts participation more likely – those earning over £30,000 a year were less likely to take part than those earning less.

Social status mattered little – those in higher p...

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