The Subjective Meaning of Social Class Identification in the United States

Jackman, Mary R.

doi:10.1086/268543

Cited by 64 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Studies have relied, instead, on measures of social class identification and have focused on political and cultural attitudes and behavior. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Almost none have looked at health. Two major problems exist with the use of class identification as a proxy for social status.…”

Section: Rationale For Instrument Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Status: Development and Evaluation of a New Indicator

et al. 2001

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ABSTRACT. Objective. Eliminating health disparities, including those that are a result of socioeconomic status (SES), is one of the overarching goals of Healthy People 2010. This article reports on the development of a new, adolescent-specific measure of subjective social status (SSS) and on initial exploratory analyses of the relationship of SSS to adolescents' physical and psychological health.Methods. A cross-sectional study of 10 843 adolescents and a subsample of 166 paired adolescent/mother dyads who participated in the Growing Up Today Study was conducted. The newly developed MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (10-point scale) was used to measure SSS. Paternal education was the measure of SES. Indicators of psychological and physical health included depressive symptoms and obesity, respectively. Linear regression analyses determined the association of SSS to depressive symptoms, and logistic regression determined the association of SSS to overweight and obesity, controlling for sociodemographic factors and SES.Results. Mean society ladder ranking, a subjective measure of SES, was 7.2 ؎ 1.3. Mean community ladder ranking, a measure of perceived placement in the school community, was 7.6 ؎ 1.7. Reliability of the instrument was excellent: the intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.73 for the society ladder and 0.79 for the community ladder. Adolescents had higher society ladder rankings than their mothers ( teen ‫؍‬ 7.2 ؎ 1.3 vs mom ‫؍‬ 6.8 ؎ 1.2; P ‫؍‬ .002). Older adolescents' perceptions of familial placement in society were more closely correlated with maternal subjective perceptions of placement than those of younger adolescents (Spearman's rho teens <15 years ‫؍‬ 0.31 vs Spearman's rho teens >15 years ‫؍‬ 0.45; P < .001 for both). SSS explained 9.9% of the variance in depressive symptoms and was independently associated with obesity (odds ratio society ‫؍‬ 0.89, 95% confidence interval ‫؍‬ 0.83, 0.95; odds ratio community ‫؍‬ 0.91, 95% confidence interval ‫؍‬ 0.87, 0.97). For both depressive symptoms and obesity, community ladder rankings were more strongly associated with health than were society ladder rankings in models that controlled for both domains of SSS. T he elimination of health disparities among different population segments, including differences related to socioeconomic status (SES), is the second overarching goal of Healthy People 2010. Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics also recognized and highlighted the importance of addressing SES as an causative agent in the creation of health differentials and called for additional research to understand the impact of SES across the life course. 1 The inverse, graded relationship between SES and infant, child, and adult health is well established. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] However, among adolescents, the SES gradient in health is present inconsistently. 12-15 A number of models have been proposed to explain the different patterning of SES effects on adolescent health. 2,16 Choosing the most appropriate model(s) has been...

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Section: Rationale For Instrument Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Status: Development and Evaluation of a New Indicator

et al. 2001

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“…The subjective assessment asked participants to identify with one of the following social-class categories when they were growing up: poor, working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, upper class. (See Jackman, 1979, andOrtner, 1998, for examples and discussions of subjective class-identity categories.) We assessed objective social class by asking about the student's family income, parents' education, and parents' occupation.…”

Section: Social Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Class and Belonging: Implications for College Adjustment

Ostrove¹,

Long²

2007

rhe

380

318

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This study addressed the extent to which social class position structures a sense of belonging at college, and the ways in which belonging informs adjustment to college. Among 322 liberal arts college students, social class background was significantly associated with a sense of belonging at college and was marginally related to academic performance but was not related to the quality of the experience they were having at college. Sense of belonging mediated the relationship between class background and adjustment to college.

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“…It is important to point out in this regard that a similar finding has consistently been reported in the literature. For example, Coburn and Edwards (1976), Kelley and Evans (1995), Hodge and Treiman (1968), Jackman (1979) and others have found that subjects are very unlikely to identify themselves with lower or upper classes, and are more likely to identify with the middle class. This finding appears to indicate that specifically in the case of poor individuals, class identification is moderately related to objective living conditions, and there are other non-economic factors that are also related.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In a similar study, conducted by Jackman (1979), it was found that the three factors with the most probability of being considered important for determining a person's social class were: "the way a person believes and feels about certain things," "life style," and "occupation." Each of these was described as very important by approximately two-fifths of the subjects interviewed.…”

Section: Relationship Between Cultural Factors and Class Identificationmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Jackman (1979) observed that 7.6% of subjects identified themselves as poor, 36.6% as working class, 43.23% as middle class, 8.2% as upper middle class, and 1% as upper class. The only notable deviation from the usual in this distribution of responses is that 7.6% identified themselves as poor, since generally 1 to 3% identify themselves as belonging to the lower class.…”

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confidence: 95%

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Class Identification and Psychological Variables Related to Well-being and Social Mobility

Palomar-Lever

2007

Applied Research Quality Life

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It has been reported in the literature that the socioeconomic level of subjects often does not correspond to their class identification, and that the latter is a better predictor of physical and psychological health variables. The objectives of this study were to provide evidence that class identification is largely independent of the socioeconomic level of subjects, and to verify the extent to which class identification is related to psychological factors (self-esteem, social support networks, strategies for coping with stress, depression, locus of control, achievement motivation and subjective well-being), and to the probability of experiencing upward social mobility. Participating in the study were 918 subjects, of whom 346 were extremely poor, 260 moderately poor and 312 were not poor. City districts in Mexico City and the larger metropolitan area were selected randomly. The results indicated a weak relationship between objective indicators of socioeconomic level and the class identification of subjects and a relationship between class identification and some of the psychological factors measured, and between the upward social mobility.Keywords Class identification . Subjective socioeconomic level . Social mobility Whether or not one has the necessary goods to develop personal capabilities leads to differentiations so profound and permanent that the social population can be said to be divided into various types of individuals, depending on their possibilities for accessing such goods. In short social classes emerge from class inequalities (Obregón 1970).

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The Subjective Meaning of Social Class Identification in the United States

Cited by 64 publications

References 13 publications

Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Status: Development and Evaluation of a New Indicator

Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Status: Development and Evaluation of a New Indicator

Social Class and Belonging: Implications for College Adjustment

Class Identification and Psychological Variables Related to Well-being and Social Mobility

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