Un nouvel âge de la société américaine ?. Dynamiques et perspectives de la structure sociale aux États-Unis (1950-2000)

For the last fifty years, the American system of social stratification has known a great turn: after the equalisation and social interventionism of the prosperity 1950-1970, a reversion appears. Since 1970, a superclass has been concentrating the outcome of the growth, the middle class is shrinking and the lower strata are pauperised. Through the description of these macrosocial changes, we observe no « New Age » social structure, but a cohort process of « restratification » with a sharper hierarchy, simultaneously based on academic titles, income and wealth. These inequalities reveal a clear divergence between the continental European and the American social structures.