8.4: Socio-Economic Status

Socio-economic Status

Socio-economic status is a combination of a person's or family's economic and social position in comparison to others. This status is measured by a person's income, education, and occupation. Furthermore, socio-economic status have been used to measure the status of people, families and communities. There are three levels in which a person can be classified as. These includes low, middle, and high. Economic inequality is becoming a big topic as researcher are making associations and connections to how the flow of resources are being distributed amongst families and communities, and how fairness on a systemic level varies within the three groups.

Socio-economic status can directly impact children’s experience with the world. There are associations between parenting styles, and socio-economic status. Socio-economic status impacts environment, and in many cases, the culture of how adults parent their children. High Socioeconomic Status parents tend to be more democratic, use reasoning, more open to children’s opinions, use more expressions of warmth and affection, more communication, reasoning, and use of complex language. They also emphasize creativity, happiness, ambition, independence, curiosity, and self-control. Low Socioeconomic Status tend to emphasize obedience, respect, neatness, cleanliness, and staying out of trouble. They are also more controlling, authoritarian, arbitrary, and use physical punishment. Even though this is researched information, there are still cultural and racial biases.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): A home in Thailand built with spare materials. (Public Domain; Pxhere)

Socio-economic status goes a step further in to the type of jobs parents have. The type of job parents has can result in the amount of time they spend with their children, and resources they can assess to provide a higher quality life for their children. Middle-class occupations deal with ideas and symbols, need to be skilled in interpersonal skills, and have more self-direction on how and what to get done. These parents evaluate children’s behavior by considering motives and attitudes, and want their children to be considerate, intellectually curious, responsible and self-controlled. In other words, their focus is on independency. Lower-class occupations deal with physical objects, use less interpersonal skills, and have routine tasks with high level of supervision. These parents evaluate children’s behavior based on immediate consequences & external characteristics, and want their children to have good manners, to do well in school, and be obedient. Their focus is conformity.

The statistics on children and poverty are discouraging (DeNavas-Walt, 2009). Children under 18 represent 36% of all poor Americans even though they constitute only 25% of the population. About 19% of U.S. children live in poverty, a figure that rises to 44% for children living just with their mothers and to 53% for children under the age of 6 living just with their mothers. As with many things, race and ethnicity play an important role: African American and Latino children are more than three times as likely as non-Latino white children to live in poverty. Children under 18 years represent 23 percent of the population, but they comprise 33 percent of all people in poverty. Among all children, 44 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families (Jiang et al., 2015). Young children under age 6 years appear to be particularly vulnerable, with 48 percent living in low-income and 25 percent living in poor families. Being a child in a low-income or poor family does not happen by chance. Parental education and employment, race/ethnicity, and other factors are associated with children experiencing economic insecurity (Jiang et al., 2015). This fact sheet describes the demographic, socio-economic, and geographic characteristics of young children and their parents. It highlights important factors that appear to distinguish low-income and poor children in this age group from their less disadvantaged counterparts (Jiang et al., 2015).

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): You can't tell a family's socioeconomic status just by their appearance. (Public Domain; Pxhere)

Wealth is an important economic resource that families use to invest in their children It can be accessed to provide cash resources or used as collateral for securing loans. Wealth is also a stock of resources and enables saving for future expenditures, such as college education) (Miller et al., 2021). Qualitative work by Thomas Shapiro shows how parents leverage their wealth to make life-changing investments in children, particularly in terms of residence in better neighborhoods and enrollment in better schools. Models of family stress show that economic strain leads to increased psychological distress and interparental conflict (Miller et al. 2021). Parental distress and conflict are linked to harsher, more detached, and less nurturing, stimulating, and responsive parenting, which in turn predicts worse outcomes for children, such as increased internalizing and externalizing problems and less advanced cognitive and academic skills (Miller et al., 2021). Wealth can reduce economic strain by providing financial and psychological security against economic crises, especially in times of hardship, such as unemployment or family breakup. Wealth can also generate nonwork income (such as interest or dividend income) without time spent working, which frees up parental time to be invested in enriching interactions with children (Miller et al., 2021).

Much research finds that poor children are at increased risk for behavioral, psychological, and health problems not only during childhood and adolescence but also well into their adult years (Wagmiller & Adelman, 2009). In a type of vicious cycle, children growing up in poor households are at greater risk of continuing to live in poverty after they reach adulthood.

Multiple factors influence social standing, however, people often assume hard work and effort leads to a high status and wealth. Socialization reinforces the ideology that social stratification is a result of personal effort or merit (Carl, 2013). The concept of meritocracy is a social ideal or value, but no society exists where the determination of social rank is purely on merit. Inheritance alone shows social standing is not always individually earned. Some people have to put little to no effort to inherit social status and wealth. Additionally, societies operating under a caste system where birth determines lifelong status undermines meritocracy. Caste systems function on the structure that someone born into a low-status group remains low status regardless of their accomplishments, and those born into high-status groups stay high status (Henslin, 2011). The caste system reinforces ascribed status rather than achieved to ensure sustainment of multiple roles and occupations in society.

Multiple factors influence social standing, however, people often assume hard work and effort leads to a high status and wealth. Socialization reinforces the ideology that social stratification is a result of personal effort or merit (Carl, 2013). The concept of meritocracy is a social ideal or value, but no society exists where the determination of social rank is purely on merit. Inheritance alone shows social standing is not always individually earned. Some people have to put little to no effort to inherit social status and wealth. Additionally, societies operating under a caste system where birth determines lifelong status undermines meritocracy. Caste systems function on the structure that someone born into a low-status group remains low status regardless of their accomplishments, and those born into high-status groups stay high status (Henslin, 2011). The caste system reinforces ascribed status rather than achieved to ensure sustainment of multiple roles and occupations in society.

In modern societies, there is evidence of merit based standing in academics and job performance but other factors such as age, disability, gender, race, and region influence life’s opportunities and challenges for obtaining social standing. A major flaw of meritocracy is how society measures social contributions. Janitorial and custodial work is necessary in society to reduce illness and manage waste just as much as surgery is to keep people healthy and alive, but surgeons receive greater rewards than janitors do for their contributions.

The United States hold the highest rate of childhood poverty than any other Western democracy. A major reason for this is that the United States lacks the large, national programs other Western democracies have both for preventing poverty and for helping children and adults already living in poverty. These programs include housing allowances, free or subsidized day care and preschool programs, and some form of national health insurance. The experience of other Western democracies indicates that the number of U.S. poor children and the problems they face are much higher than they need to be (Waldfogel, 2009).

Marx and Engels (1967) suggested there is a social class division between the capitalists who control the means of production and the workers. In 1985, Erik Wright interjected that people can occupy contradictory class positions throughout their lifetime. People who have occupied various class positions (e.g., bookkeeper to manager to chief operating officer) relate to the experiences of others in those positions, and as a result may feel internal conflict in handling situations between positions or favoring one over another. Late in the twentieth century, Joseph Kahl and Dennis Gilbert (1992) updated the theoretical perspective of Max Weber by developing a six-tier model portraying the United States class structure including underclass, working-poor, working, lower middle, upper middle, and capitalists. The social class model depicts the distribution of property, prestige, and power among society based on income and education.

Each class lifestyle requires a certain level of wealth in order to acquire the material necessities and comforts of life (Henslin 2011). The correlation between the standard of living and quality of life or life chances (i.e., opportunities and barriers) influences one’s ability to afford food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, other basic needs, and luxury items. A person’s standards of living including income, employment, class, and housing effects their cultural identity.

Social class serves as a marker or indication of resources. These markers are noticeable in the behaviors, customs, and norms of each stratified group (Carl 2013). People living in impoverished communities have different cultural norms and practices compared to those with middle incomes or families of wealth. For example, the urban poor often sleep on cardboard boxes on the ground or on sidewalks and feed themselves by begging, scavenging, and raiding garbage (Kottak and Kozaitis 2012). Middle income and wealth families tend to sleep in housing structures and nourish themselves with food from supermarkets or restaurants.

References

Carl, J.D. (2013). THINK Social Problems, 2nd Ed. Pearson.

DeNavas-Walt, C., Proctor, B. D., & Smith, J. C. (2009). Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2008 (Current Population Report P60-236). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Henslin, J.M., (2011), Social Problems: A down to earth approach. 10th Ed. Pearson

Kahl, J.A., Gilbert, D. (1992). American Class Structure: A new synthesis. Wadsworth.

Kottak, C., Kozaitis, K.A. (2012), On Being Different: Diversity and multiculturalism in the north american mainstream. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Marx, K., Engels, F. (1967). The Communist manifesto. Harmondsworth, Penguin

Miller, P., Podvysotska, T., Betancur, L., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2021). Wealth and Child Development: Differences in Associations by Family Income and Developmental Stage. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(3), 154–174.

Jiang, Y., Ekono, M., & Skinner, C. (2015). Basic Facts about Low-Income Children: Children under 6 Years, 2013. New York: National Center for Children in Poverty, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.

Wagmiller, R. L., & Adelman, R. M. (2009). Childhood and Intergenerational Poverty: The Long-Term Consequences of Growing Up Poor. Columbia Academic Commons.

Waldfogel, J. (2010). Britain’s war on poverty. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Attribution

Pressbooks. (2016, April 8). Introduction to Sociology: Understanding and changing the Social World. Openstax.