Making Health Disparities from Socioeconomic Status: Situating Internalized Classism and Experiences of Deprivation

• In Event: 30869 - Open Topics in Social Psychology

Abstract

The literature on socioeconomic health disparities tends to overlook how SES itself is experienced, focusing largely on proximal or behavioral outcomes of SES. We contend that tangible experiences of SES could help explain how these more proximal outcomes come about. To help make this case, we focus on strain-based, rank-based, and discrimination-based deprivations as important types of SES experiences. Separately as well as together, these deprivations carry the potential to generate internalized classism as well as worse overall health. In a probability U.S. sample (N=1,130-1,167), deprivations together provide a particularly strong account of SES-related health disparities. In turn, each deprivation relates to health through self-stigma about one’s economic circumstances. When combined with macro approaches examining sociopolitical variation, deprivation-based experiences as well as their internalization may help to move forward empirical approaches to structural classism and health.

Authors

• Matthew Andersson, Baylor University

• Bruce G Link, University of California-Riverside