We Are Not Equal: Inequality, Prosperity, and the Stratification of Subjective Social Status

• In Event: Marxist Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Marxist Sociology Section Roundtable 4

Abstract

The previous studies on subjective social status predominantly focused on the level of subjective social status (SSS), whereas the heterogeneity in the dispersion or consensus of SSS, which reflects the shared class or status identities and is essential to key sociological debates, has received limited attention. Combining classical Marxist class stratification theory, Weberian Status construction theory, and modern social cognition theories, this paper theorizes that higher social inequality leads to lower levels of SSS and larger dispersion in SSS, whereas economic prosperity leads to higher average levels of SSS and smaller dispersion in SSS. To empirically examine the hypothesis, this paper applies variance function regression (VFR) to the 2000 to 2020 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) datasets (N = 660,950). The preliminary results show that 10 points increase in the Gini index (0-100) increases the dispersion in SSS by 10%, consistent with the New-Marxist view that increases in objective inequality intensify divisions in subjective social status.

Authors

• BOYAN ZHENG, Princeton University

• Shiyuan Li