Socioeconomic Status
Socioeconomic status (SES) refers to an individual’s position in society as determined by a variety of factors including income, education, occupation, and accumulated wealth. It describes an individual’s or a family’s ranking on a hierarchy according to the access to or control over some combination of valued commodities such as wealth, power, and social status. Typically, SES is measured by three common indicators: parental income, parental education, and parental occupation. SES is probably the most widely used explanatory variable in educational and psychological research. A vast amount of research documents the detrimental effects of lack of social and economic resources on children’s development in several different domains, including physical, cognitive, and emotional development.
In relation to education, SES can affect students’ overall experiences in school in general, and academic achievement in particular. The effect of SES on education can be direct through access to...
Suggested Reading
- Bornstein, M. C., & Bradley, R. H. (2003). Socioeconomic status, parenting, and child development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
- Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (Eds.). (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. New York: Sage.Google Scholar
Suggested Resources
- New York Times Online—Class Matters: An Overview—http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html: This is a New York Times series report for which a team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class—defined as a combination of income, education, wealth, and occupation—influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity.