Studying Socioeconomic Status: Conceptual Problems and an Alternative Path Forward

Abstract

Socioeconomic status (SES, or social class) is considered an important determinant of psychological and life outcomes. Despite this importance, how to appropriately conceive of and measure it remains unsettled. In this article I argue that SES is, under conventional conceptions of the construct, an unmeasurable construct and present an alternative strategy for studying socioeconomic conditions. I make this argument using several lines of analysis. First, a literature review of 20 years of psychological research on SES reveals that psychologists rarely define SES theoretically (79.6% of articles did not) but call a great number of operationalizations measures of SES (147 in total). Second, current recommendations for studying SES permit contradictory predictions, rendering the recommendations unsatisfactory. Third, the appropriate measurement model for SES inhibits accumulation of results across studies, making studying the construct practically impossible. To rectify these issues, I reconceptualize SES as a set of socioeconomic conditions and develop a measurement strategy for studying these conditions. I conclude by considering implications for ongoing research on socioeconomic conditions, as well as for interpreting past research on SES.

Healthier diets for all? A systematic review and meta‐analysis examining socioeconomic equity of the effect of increasing availability of healthier foods on food choice and energy intake

“…It will be important to consider alternative measures of SEP (e.g. income, subjective social status, index of multiple deprivation), which may have distinct and separate effects on behavior (see 34 ). Further, the studies tended to categorize individuals as lower SEP when they did not have higher education (for exceptions see 8,20 ).…”

Individual Characteristics Associated with Perceptions of Control Over Mortality Risk and Determinants of Health Effort

“…Our findings suggest that lower socioeconomic status is associated with greater PUMR across these factors. This further highlights the importance of selecting structural features of socioeconomic status that are theoretically relevant to key variables of interest (Antonoplis, 2022). These findings suggest that PUMR may represent some psychological appraisal of exposure to risk in one's local environment, as well as one's perceived means to mitigate risk.…”

“…Measuring socioeconomic status in health research is fraught with difficulties due to the complex nature of the construct and the lack of precision and reliability of measures seeking to capture it (Shavers, 2007). Recent guidance for measuring socioeconomic status has highlighted the importance of selecting those structural features of socioeconomic status most central to the outcomes under investigation (Antonoplis, 2022). This led us to consider which socioeconomic features might reasonably be expected to influence perceptions of control over risk.…”

Measurement invariance of the Domain‐Specific Risk‐Taking (DOSPERT) scale

“…While SES is a widely studied phenomenon, its socially bound nature makes it easily observed but difficult to quantify. Consequently, there are numerous approaches to measuring SES, including some combination of net worth, income, educational attainment, and occupation (Antonoplis, 2022; Hughes et al, 2022). The MacArthur ladder has been validated internationally and is in widespread use (Tan et al, 2020).…”

“…Of primary concern is the equivalence across SES. SES broadly refers to an individual's standing within a societal hierarchy and access to economic and social resources (Antonoplis, 2022). Such resources likely affect one's response to items on the DOSPERT.…”