Does the crisis increase the differences among social strata? Measuring social change in Argentina

Abstract

The hypothesis developed in this paper is that social change in Argentina can be observed objectively through the relative positions of households with respect to primary goods. By applying multivariate statistical techniques of typological construction (Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis) to data from the Permanent Household Survey (1997 and 2002) and Continuous Household Survey (2003 and 2006) we obtain four types of changes capable of accounting for intra and inter-temporal evolution of society and particularly characterize the impact of the crisis.