Socioeconomic Status

Measures of SES

Relative position in a given hierarchy is frequently expressed as a score produced by a scale. Among the most prominent SES scales are the Hollingshead Four-Factor Index of Social Status (HI) (Hollingshead, 1975) and Duncan Socioeconomic Index (Duncan, 1961). There have also been significant developments toward internationally standardized SES scales, such as the Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale (SIOPS), constructed of averages of several national prestige scores. The SIOPS was originally coded on the 1968 International Standard Classification of Occupations of the International Labor Office of the United Nations and was subsequently recoded on the 1988 International Standard Classification of Occupations. The International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status (ISEI) uses data on education, occupation, and income from 73,901 full-time employed men in 16 countries. (Both SIOPS and ISEI can be obtained over the Internet at http://www.idealibrary.com.)

Typically, a limited set of sociodemographic indicators have been used alone or in combination to index SES. The indicators used most often are educational attainment, occupational prestige, and financial income. These three indicators reflect the main components of social stratification and are usually interrelated but are not interchangeable (Bornstein, Hahn, Suwalsky, & Haynes, 2003). The HI, for example, is based on the education, occupation, marital status, and gender of each employed householder in a household. However, the use of composite scales makes it difficult to interpret the mechanism(s) responsible for associations between SES and psychological processes. For [Page 1038]this reason, the simultaneous use of separate indicators for three different kinds of capital (financial, human, and social) is recommended to measure SES and to assess the relative impact of individual SES factors.

Furthermore, it is sometimes profitable to distinguish objective and subjective SES. Subjective SES has been conceptualized as individuals' perceptions of their own relative positions in society in terms of education, occupation, and income. The basic idea involved is that objective status might exert its influence through a mediating chain of events that prominently includes perceived status.

Role of SES in Applied Developmental Science

Specification of SES plays several key roles in applied developmental, psychological, and social science. First, SES is a sociodemographic marker variable. It is essential to document the sociodemographic characteristics of study participants to describe the characteristics of the study sample adequately and to ensure proper comparability and generalizability. Second, SES is regularly associated with a wide variety of human health and disorder indexes as well as, third, with variations in parenting and child development (Hernandez, 1997; Hoff, Laursen, & Tardif, 2002).

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