Cultural capital and the social origin pay gap in the UK: Do you like the opera?

A wealth of qualitative literature on the ‘class ceiling’ highlights how cultural capital plays a role in the social origin pay gap. However, no study has quantitatively examined this association. This paper uses data from Understanding Society, measuring cultural capital via respondents’ engagement in five ‘highbrow’ cultural activities: attending the opera, ballet, a classical music performance, visiting a museum or gallery, and performed drama theatre. I find cultural capital slightly reduces the social origin pay gap for all social origin groups, with significant effects observed for some cultural activities. Respondents who engage in one or more of the five cultural activities report higher wages, but this benefit is primarily for individuals from managerial/professional origins. The paper extends Bourdieusian theorising on cultural capital and offers a methodological contribution to the literature through offering a quantitative insight on the association of cultural capital and the social origin pay gap in the UK.