Beyond conventional socioeconomic status: examining subjective and objective social status with self-reported health among Asian immigrants

Abstract

Despite mounting evidence for a strong and persistent association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, this relationship is largely unknown among Asian immigrants, a fast growing minority group in the US population. Previous research has typically focused on objective SES (primarily education and income) and ignored self-perceived SES. Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) (N = 1,570), we examined the impact of subjective as well as objective SES upon multiple self-reported health outcomes among Asian immigrants. Results indicated that conventional SES indicators by and large were non-significantly related to self-rated physical health, physical discomfort, self-rated mental health, and psychological distress. In contrast, subjective SES relative to people in the United States and people in the community showed strong associations with health outcomes above and beyond conventional SES markers. This study suggested a promising avenue to incorporate subjective SES in health disparities research, especially among immigrants.

Relationship between subjective social status and perceived health among Latin American immigrant women

“…As in previous research, it was shown that subjective social status assessment provided information about health that could not be captured by socioeconomic status (16)(17)19) . In this study, as in the studies cited, it became clear that, regardless of their social or material circumstances, the way in which women considered their social position was a significant predictor of their perceived health status.…”

“…Other authors found similar results to those in this study (18) , indicating that the indicators of socioeconomic status were irrelevant for studying immigrant groups because they did not capture the actual socio-economic situation of these groups, introducing limitations to the study of health inequalities. results between socioeconomic status and subjective social status (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19) . The authors argued that subjective social status was based on indicators of socioeconomic status, but that this relationship was weaker in people from ethnic minorities.…”

Subjective Social Status and Self-Reported Health Among US-born and Immigrant Latinos

“…These categories were collapsed into a dichotomized outcome for physical and mental health separately, with one indicating ''poor'' or ''fair'' health and zero otherwise (''good'' to ''excellent'') [12,13,[43][44][45].…”

“…years. Occupation was assessed by participants' selfreported work status and job titles and categorized as: managerial occupations, occupations related to sales, clerical, service sectors, physical labor workers, other occupations such as armed forces, and non-employed [13].…”

“…Interest in the health effects of relative social rank has grown because stressful social comparisons constitute an important, yet understudied psychosocial pathway between health and both socioeconomic status and income inequality [1,3,[6][7][8][9][10]. The subjective status-health relationship appears to vary, in part, by race/ethnicity [11][12][13][14][15][16]. Though studies in Latin America have examined the subjective status-health relationship, few have tested this association among United States Latinos [11,[17][18][19][20][21].…”