Socioeconomic Status

Socioeconomic status (SES) is examined both at the internal, family level and as a group and national attribute. At the family level, SES is an indicator of a family's position in a hierarchy that defines societal standing and ultimately determines opportunity and future success of family members. SES considers family income, levels of education, occupational categories, family history or blood (e.g., royalty), gender, perceived intelligence of family members, community standing, and often race and religion. In some countries, the latter categories far outweigh more mutable traits such as income or education. As reflected in the term, both social attributes and economic standing are incorporated into the characterization. Status is sometimes divided into ascribed status (inborn, such as gender, intelligence, or royal blood) and achieved status (occupation, wealth, or education). Most commonly, SES is associated with wealth or poverty.

Families with higher SES almost always have greater opportunities for the success of their children in education and employment. Higher SES often is reflected in greater resources that are turned into higher-quality child care, greater access to reading materials and exposure to technology, more availability of communications such as cell phones and computers, and generally a better environment for learning. Simply being a part of a higher-level group alters, through regular exposure, vocabulary and language ability, which in turn opens opportunity for access to business, social, and educational groupings.

Likewise, the reciprocal is true. Lower SES is associated with deprivation of opportunity, greater likelihood of exposure to crime and gang violence, and even discouragement from academic success, thus developing a cycle of poverty and limited access to both skills and business capital.

The cyclic nature of SES often results in a rigidity of social stratification. Especially when SES is coincident with visible racial characteristics or religious identification, it can turn into a fractionalization of a society that leads to conflict. Examples include the relationship between whites and blacks in the United States, Malays and Chinese in Malaysia, Shia and Sunni in Iraq, and castes in India, among many.

The nature of government has an impact on SES within societies. In fact, the critical divisions between governments with capitalist and socialist objectives are only superficially about control of the means of production. The differences are as much about the leveling of SES and the government s role in that process. Political leaders from the 18th century forward have often seen their roles as being to lift the lower classes and to promote social mobility. In some cases, this effort is pursued as a moral imperative, while in others it is seen as a means of conflict avoidance and economic progression. Philosophical cleavages of great magnitude related to SES exist based on differences in thinking about human nature, intelligence, ethics and morality, and economic achievement. The gaps between rich and poor, which inevitably parallel SES, are the essence of issues of nationalism, revolution, war, and raw politics in virtually every country in the 21st century, as they have been throughout much of modern history.

Measuring SES remains a matter of debate as it has for the last half century. While simple wealth is often used as an indicator, matters of royalty (bloodlines), biological racial character, IQ, class, and other human characteristics are often entered into the equation and the measures remain imprecise, even though the term is commonplace. More progress has been made when talking about groups, rather than families, and especially about countries.

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