The New Service Class: Housing, Consumption, and Lifestyle among London Bankers in the 1990s

Abstract

In this paper I draw on a survey of professional employees in three of the City of London's merchant banks to assess arguments about the residential preferences and lifestyle decisions of the ‘new’ middle class. It has been argued that an increasingly polarised workforce within producer service industries has, in part, led to greater social polarisation in inner areas through the mechanism of gentrification. Further the effects of the feminisation of the labour market, especially the rise in the numbers of professional women in employment, have been adduced as a significant factor in housing-market change. A number of commentators have suggested that women in professional occupations are key players in inner-area gentrification, although the evidence here is limited. Further, middle-class anxiety about employment prospects has been identified by Lyons in a recent article in this journal as a further reason for increased preferences for inner-area locations. In this paper I assess these arguments.

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