Adolescents’ understanding of social class: a comparison of white upper middle class and working class youth

doi:10.1016/S1054-139X(99)00116-0

Journal of Adolescent Health

Volume 27, Issue 2, August 2000, Pages 80-83

This work was presented in part at the Society for Adolescent Medicine Annual Meeting, March 6, 1997, San Francisco, CA.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(99)00116-0 Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose: Social class is increasingly being recognized as an important factor in the development of population-based variation in health among teens. However, little consensus exists regarding its measurement or conceptualization.

Methods: This study examined beliefs about social class of 48 working class and 50 upper middle class 16-year-old, white teens.

Results: Working class teens were more likely to misclassify themselves with regard to social class position. Significant class differences were present in beliefs regarding social mobility, parents’ equity, equality of opportunity within society, and financial status as adults. How this conceptualization of social class translates into population-based variation in health remains an important area for further inquiry.

Section snippets

Methods

The study design and sample have been described in detail previously (8). Briefly, this is a cross-sectional study of a convenience sample of 48 working class and 50 upper middle class 16-year-old, academically achieving, white adolescents stratified by gender, recruited through flyers in local high schools and newspaper advertisements for participation in a psychological experiment on social class identification and its biobehavioral correlates. Assignment to either the upper middle class or

Subjective vs. objective social class identity and social class aspirations

Data on teens’ subjective social class identification and expected social class at parents’ age stratitfied by objective social position are presented in Table 1. Only 17% of working class youth subjectively identified as “working class,” compared with 74% of upper middle class subjects who correctly identify with their objective social class position (p < .0001). No upper middle class youth misclassified themselves as “working” or “upper class” and rarely expected to rise to a higher class as

Discussion

The working class adolescents in this study exhibited differences in self-identification of social class position, perceptions of how society operates relative to class, aspirations for their future, and expectations of achieving their aspirations relative to upper middle class youth. Though our society has gone through significant transitions in the past 10 to 20 years, including more women in the workplace and more single-parent families (15), these youth followed the pattern of social class

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank S. Jean Emans, M.D., for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Funded in part by a grant from The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation to The Health Institute, New England Medical Center, and Project MCJ-MA 259195 and Order # 103HR960337P from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (Title V, Social Security Act), Health Resources and Services Administration, DHHS.

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The social gradient in adolescent health has largely been explored using objective indicators of the socioeconomic components of parents' social class, such as income, education, or occupation, which serve as proxy measures of access to goods and services. Several recent studies have also investigated adolescents' perceptions of their relative subjective social status (SSS)—using scales modeled after those used in adults—and found the ladders to be valuable in explaining adolescents' health status even after taking into account objective indicators of parental social class (Glendinning, Love, Hendry, & Shucksmith, 1992; Goodman et al., 2001; Goodman et al., 2000). Similar to the measurements for SSS in adults, the youth-specific indicators involve two “ladders:” one representing broader society, and the other representing one's immediate community; adolescents are asked to rank themselves on these ladders.
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Adolescent health briefAdolescents’ understanding of social class: a comparison of white upper middle class and working class youth

Abstract

Section snippets

Methods

Subjective vs. objective social class identity and social class aspirations

Discussion

Acknowledgements

Society and Health

Social determinants of healththe sociobiological translation

The measurement of social class in epidemiology

Epidemiol Rev

Socioeconomic factors and cardiovascular diseasea review of the literature

Circulation

The Psychology of Social ClassesA Study of Class Consciousness

Functions of children’s perceptions of the stratification system

Am Sociol Rev

Adolescent health brief
Adolescents’ understanding of social class: a comparison of white upper middle class and working class youth