Mexican Children's and Adolescents' Development of Occupational Hierarchy Related to Consumption and Saving

Abstract

Various development studies interested in children's and adolescents' comprehension of social organization and social inequality, have investigated their conceptions about occupations and the social hierarchy and class levels they imply. Nevertheless, little is known concerning their comprehension about occupational hierarchy related to what adults in distinct occupations are able to consume and save. The aim of this study was to analyze this comprehension in order to understand the development of concepts that interweave in children's and adolescents' societal and economic knowledge. 210 subjects between 6 and 16 years of age from urban and rural social backgrounds were sampled. They were individually interviewed with a task about what four persons with distinct occupations consume and save. Subjects' arguments were analyzed and from them, types of answers and categories were elaborated and quantified. The results show age and social background differences related to what subjects think about types of consumption and saving for the occupations that were studied.

Occupational hierarchy as a device to study Mexican children’s and adolescents’ ideas about consumption and saving in adults

“…In this paper we give a brief analysis of consumption results since a detailed description of how children think that adults in diVerent occupations use the money in all consumption categories, has been presented elsewhere (Diez-Martinez & Ochoa, 2003). Here we focus on children's ideas about saving concerning the occupational hierarchy presented.…”

“…3. The labeling of the types of answers was partly theoretically-driven (Groenland, Bloem, & Kuylen, 1996;Katona, 1975;Keynes, 1936;Sonuga-Barke & Webley, 1993;Van Veldhoven & Groenland, 1993), and partly based on previous studies by our own research group (Diez-Martinez & Ochoa, 2003;Diez-Martinez, Ochoa, & De la Vega, 2004;Ochoa, 2002;Sánchez, 2002). The responses from the children were grouped into four categories.…”

“…However, there are no studies devoted to investigating what children and adolescents think about adults' consumption and saving, with the exception of those developed within our research group (De la Vega, 2002;Diez-Martinez & Ochoa, 2003;Ochoa, 2002;Sánchez, 2002). Because too little work has been done concerning how children and adolescents view adult's consumption, this is an exploratory study.…”

How Does Street Information Impact on Mexican Children's Economic Literacy? A Developmental Study

“…We have studied information included in Mexican school books about work and unemployment (Diez-Martinez et al, 2001) information about occupations that subjects recognize obtained through television (Diez-Martinez et al, 2000), and recently we analyzed children's and adolescents' ideas about adults' consumption and saving (Diez-Martinez & Ochoa, 2003;. All of these studies in the interest of defining specific impact of socialization agents on subjects understanding of socioeconomic knowledge.…”