Do Young Children Have a Subjective Social Status?

• In Event: 3-137 - Children's View of Social Inequality: Evaluations and Decisions About Wealth

Integrative Statement

By preschool, children are aware of differences in social status, attending to the economic situation of others (Ramsey, 1991). It is unclear if children understand their own subjective social status. Children age 10 and older were able to rank themselves on a 10-rung ladder representing the spread of wealth-- 10 indicating the richest and 1 indicating the poorest (Mistry et al. 2015). Children alluded to material wealth and lifestyles differences in justifications. Very few studies have asked children under 10 years old about their own status. Rauscher and colleagues (2017) conducted interviews with children between 4 and 6 years old, and while children were able to report subjective status, the authors do not report correlations between perceived class and objective class.
We asked 333 children between the ages of 4 and 10 years old to rank themselves on the 10-rung subjective social status (Adler et al., 2000). Specifically, children were told that the top rung (10) were the families with the most money, biggest houses, most food, and the parents had the best jobs while the bottom rung (1) was the opposite. Children were then asked why they placed their family at that rung and responses were coded into seven categories based on the content: uninformative (“I don’t know”), four categories mentioned in the scale (money, house, food, parent job) plus consumer goods and neighborhood which were mentioned frequently. We also collected objective socioeconomic status measures for 73% of participants (family income).
Preliminary analyses show that children ranked themselves between rungs 4 and 10, a range similar to adults (Adler et al. 2000). We median split age to create younger (M= 5.9 years) and older (M=8 years) groups. Younger children were more likely to give uninformative responses as justifications (X2(1) = 12.96; p <.005). Older children were also more likely to reference categories relating to money (X2(1) = 6.35; p <.05), house size (X2(1) = 5.9; p <.05), consumer goods (X2(1) = 9.8; p <.001), and parent occupation (X2(1) = 9.29; p <.001). Older children were more likely to justify their subjective status by alluding to the status of their neighbors and friends (X2(1) = 8.05; p <.005).
To determine whether children’s SSS became more accurate with age, we used median splits on the family’s objective income and the child’s SSS. Children in the younger age group rated their SSS higher (Median = 8) compared to the older age group (Median = 6). Using a median split within each age group we created high and low SSS groups. Children in lower income families tended to rate themselves high on SSS regardless of age. By comparison, children in higher income families tended to have a more accurate perception of their social status and showed a marked shift with age (Pearson’s X2 = 20.27, p < .001).
Children’s development of subjective status provides valuable insight into how the experience of relative status impacts domains of development. Children will commonly consider status broadly, and give varying accuracies depending on income level and age.

Authors

• Teresa Harvey, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Peter R Blake, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author