Deirdre Bloome presents "Rising Class Crystallization? Trends in Multidimensional Class Inequality across Racialized/Ethnic Groups"

In recent decades, U.S. income and wealth inequality grew, educational attainment rose, and occupational structures shifted. Because these dimensions of social class are intertwined---with higher education often generating higher income, wealth, and occupational prestige---rising inequality in one may have pushed some people toward the tops of multiple hierarchies, and others toward the bottoms of multiple hierarchies (polarizing people in the multidimensional space of class inequality). Are people occupying increasingly consistent positions across multiple class hierarchies? And has this class crystallization trended similarly for Black, White, and Hispanic people, despite their different opportunities, constraints, and initial class positions? We address these questions using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1984--2019. To do so, we introduce nonparametric and parametric methods for studying multidimensional inequality, including models that jointly parameterize the mean and covariance matrix of a multivariate outcome as functions of covariates.