Status Inconsistency and Subjective Class identity in the United States

• In Event: 212 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Identity and Inequality

Abstract

This paper investigates the changes in the effects of the various objective socioeconomic measures such as income, occupation, and education on the subjective class identification using the 1972 to 2012 General Social Survey data. Despite the rise in income inequality, the expansion in higher education, and the changes in the occupational structure over the last several decades, the proportional distribution of the subjective class identification has hardly changed in the United States. We explore whether the effects of the relative positions in income, occupation, and education on the subjective class identification have changed over this time period. In particular, we pay attention to the role of status inconsistency, which refers to the situation that an individual’s objective class positions as measured by the relative ranks in income, the occupational prestige score, and years of education do not line up with each other. Our results show that indeed the status inconsistency negatively affects the subjective class identification with the upper class. Interestingly enough, the importance of the relative rank in the income distribution on the subjective class identification has increased between 1972 and 2012, while the impacts of the relative ranks in the occupational prestige score and educational attainment have decreased. Gender-specific trends are reported. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Authors

• Byeongdon Oh, University of Kansas

• ChangHwan Kim, University of Kansas