While there’s ample evidence of the professional class using its economic and educational capital to preserve its advantages — think of the clustering of professionals into exclusive neighborhoods, or the early immersion of professional-class children into a world of literacy, art and science — its move left is evident even on questions of economic redistribution. My own analysis of data from the General Social Survey shows that in recent decades, as class inequality has increased, Americans who hold advanced degrees have grown more supportive of government efforts to reduce income differences, whether through changes to taxes or strengthening the welfare system.
On this issue, the views of the highly educated are now similar to those of groups with much lower levels of education, who have a real material stake in reducing inequalities. Even higher-income advanced degree holders have become more redistributionist, if less so than others.
