Social Class and Political Participation: A Review and an Explanation.

This paper reviews and explains the relationship between socioeconomic status and political participation from a structural perspective; i.e., social organization influences people's range of options, producing different rates of behavior among those in varying locations in the society. There are six categories of political participation: cognitive, expressive, organizational, electoral, partisan, and governmental. In each case, the poor display the lowest and the rich the highest rate of participation. This difference reflects variations in political and psychological resources and the structure of the electoral process. As a result, political benefits also differ by social class.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]