Subjective Social Status and Objective Health Among Older People in England. A Longitudinal Approach With Biomarkers

Subjective social status has a known association with health, whereby better health outcomes are observed for those with higher perceived status. However, in this article we offer new evidence on the status–health relationship using a rigorous methodological approach that considers both observed and unobserved confounders. We use 14 years of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging and derive a measure of allostatic load with biomarkers as an objective measure of health. We apply ‘within–between’ panel regression models which reveal the expected association between subjective status and health when comparing participants (the ‘between’ estimate), but no association when examining temporal variation within participants (the ‘within’ estimate). When controlling for personality traits, optimism, and parental education the ‘between’ association between subjective status and allostatic also load disappears. These results suggest that perceived status is not a pathway to health, in and of itself, among older people.

A Decline in the Social Status of the Working Class? Conflicting Evidence for 8 Western Countries, 1987–2017

The consensus view among political scientists is that the subjective social status of low-skilled workers has declined over the last decades, and this status loss of the working class is seen as contributing to the rise of the radical right. We examine the micro-foundation of this claim by tracing the evolution of subjective status for different social classes in Europe and the US. We use all available survey rounds of the International Social Survey Programme 1987–2017 and replicate findings with the European Social Survey 2002–2016. While unskilled workers perceive their status to be lower than members of the middle class everywhere, we find no relative or absolute fall in their subjective social status over time. Unskilled workers were at the bottom of the status hierarchy in the 1990s and 2010s. Our findings throw doubt on the narrative that sees workers’ falling subjective social status as a prominent driver behind the rise of the radical right.

The trajectory of subjective social status and its multiple determinants in contemporary China

Subjective social status is an individual's perception of his/her position in the social stratum, and it shapes social inequality in a perceived way. By using the China Family Panel Studies and employing growth curve modeling strategies, this article examines the subjective social status trajectories of Chinese people between 2010 and 2018 and how these trajectories are shaped by objective social status. The empirical findings show that the distribution of subjective social status in each wave (2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018) presents a middle-class identification, which means that the majority of people tend to position their subjective social status at the middle level, while the overall trend in average subjective social status has increased over time. The results of trajectory analysis show that different objective socioeconomic status indicators have different effects on the baseline value and rate of growth in subjective social status, which suggests that the trajectories of subjective social status are influenced by multiple determinants in China. While education, income and political capital reduce the gaps between the classes in subjective social status over time, wealth and employment status enlarge these gaps and thus enhance subjective social inequality. This article highlights the gradient effect that wealth has on the dynamics of subjective social status and helps us to better understand subjective social stratification in contemporary China.